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Copyright N ° C 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 

















































































































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CAMP BOB’S HILL 


BY 

CHARLES PIERCE BURTON 

Author of “The Boys of Bob’s Hill,” “The Boy Scouts of Bob’s 
Hill,” Etc. 


With Illustrations by 
GORDON GRANT 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1915 



4 



-O ?_5- 




Copyright, 1915, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


Published September, 1915 








QCT -4 1915 

©CI.A411790 




CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PA6E 

I. Skinny Gets a Letter .i 

II. Off for Long Lake.19 

III. Getting the Camp Ready.32 

IV. The Ravens Find Old Friends .... 41 

V. Enlisting for the War.55 

VI. Around the Campfire.71 

VII. A Maiden in Distress.85 

VIII. A Flint Lake Beach Party .... 102 

IX. Fishing for Bass.115 

X. Among the Sand Dunes.133 

XI. Some Astonishing Adventures . . . .148 

XII. Train Robbers at Dune Park . . . .166 

XIII. Letters for Mr. G. Miller.180 

XIV. The Ravens Find a Rival Camp . . .192 

XV. The Challenge.208 

XVI. The Great Tracking Contest .... 224 

XVII. The Ravens Make Good Their “Defi” . . 237 

XVIII. Boiling a Railroad.247 

XIX. “ Two O’clock and All’s Well "... 262 

XX. The Wreck of the “Polly Jane” . . . 282 

XXI. First Aid to the Injured.295 

XXII. Back to Bob’s Hill.305 













ILLUSTRATIONS 


PA0E 

We carried our stuff to the water and put it in a 
couple of rowboats .. Frontispiece 

It didn’t take us long to push out and throw in our 

HOOKS.118 

Pedro’s map.123 l 

It was a sure enough battle and Indians and white 

MEN BEGAN TO FALL ON EVERY SIDE. 152 f 

She STEPPED FORWARD AND PINNED a BIG BLACK CROW ON 

HIS SHIRT.276 







































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CAMP BOB’S HILL 


CHAPTER I 

SKINNY GETS A LETTER 

I F you will take a map of Massachusetts, which, 
you know, is a part of the United States of 
America, and look up in the northwest corner, 
you will find some funny-looking black marks and 
the word “ Greylock.” Greylock is a mountain, and 
a mountain is a high elevation of land. My geog¬ 
raphy says so. 

Skinny says that the marks look more like our 
cave than they do like a mountain, and that is what 
we all think, but I suppose it is the best that the 
geography folks can do. 

Anyhow, Greylock is the highest mountain in 
Massachusetts, which, if you don’t know, the teacher 
ought to make you stay after school. 

That is where this history begins,—not on top 
of Greylock, but at the bottom of one of its foot- 


2 Skinny Gets a Letter 

hills, which we call Bob’s Hill—with me, John Alex¬ 
ander Smith, hoeing in our garden one Saturday 
morning toward the last of May, wishing vacation 
time would hurry along or, anyhow, that some of 
the boys would show up. 

I was just resting and looking at a window in 
the upper part of our barn. There was only one 
whole pane of glass left in the window and I was 
wondering if I could hit that one with a stone, when 
I heard an awful yell. 

Then a voice shouted, “ Charge, my braves. Eat 
’em alive,” and before I could have said Jack Rob¬ 
inson more than three times, the whole Band 
swarmed over the fence, from Phillips’s driveway, 
into the garden. 

“ You’d better be careful, Skinny Miller,” I said, 
“ how you go charging over those peas and beans, 
or there’ll be something doing. My mother’ll charge 
you all right, that’s what she will.” 

But, just the same, they surrounded me and 
marched me into the house where Ma was looking 
out of the kitchen window to see what all the noise 
was about. 


Skinny Gets a Letter 3 

“ Mrs. Smith,” said Skinny, as bold as anything, 
“ the Band is going to have a meeting at the cave 
right away and Pedro being secretary, we need him 
to write up the doings.” 

“ I’ll finish hoeing to-night,” I told her. “ I’m 
’most through, anyway. It’ll be cooler then, too.” 

“ Is this to be a meeting of bandits or Indians or 
Boy Scouts? ” she asked, trying to look very sober, 
but I could see a twinkle in her eyes. “ Because,” 
she went on, “ if it is Boy Scouts, I have just fried 
a batch of doughnuts, but I don’t suppose Indians or 
bandits care about such things.” 

We all gave a yell at that. Then Skinny held up 
one hand and we stopped to hear what he had to 
say. 

“ Fellers,” said he, “ when it comes to Pedro’s 
mother’s doughnuts, there ain’t any difference be¬ 
tween being Boy Scouts, bandits, or Injuns. We’re 
good for two apiece any day of the week.” 

Then he folded his arms like a bandit and looked 
around fierce. “ Are we, or ain’t we? ” said he. 

“ We are,” we all shouted in chorus, except Bill 
Wilson. Bill yelled, “ Betcher life!” so loud that 


4 Skinny Gets a Letter 

Ma covered her ears and made believe she was 
scared. 

Then she gave us the doughnuts in a paper bag 
and told us to clear out. It did not take us long. In 
less than a minute we were climbing up through 
Blackinton’s orchard, along a path which winds 
among the trees. Beyond the orchard, Bob’s Hill 
is so steep that we didn’t stop to climb straight up, 
but took a sort of road that leads around and up 
on the other side. We usually dig our shoes in 
and climb straight up, partly for the fun of doing 
it and partly because from the top we can see all 
up and down the valley, the village below, and East 
Mountain opposite. It’s great. 

This time we took the easier way and soon were 
beyond the top and hurrying toward our cave. 

Straight ahead was old Greylock, smiling down 
at us in the sunshine and looking so fine that we 
gave a cheer. Between, green fields sloped gradu¬ 
ally up to the woods on the mountain-side, where 
we knew that a mountain brook was tumbling over 
the rocks in a splendid waterfall, then dashing 
down past our cave. 


Skinny Gets a Letter 5 

There are eight of us and sometimes we are 
bandits, sometimes Indians, and sometimes Boy 
Scouts, just as Ma said, though mostly we are 
Scouts because we like to wear uniforms, rescue 
people, and all that sort of thing. No matter which 
we are, I am secretary and have to put all the doings 
in the minutes of the meetings. 

Our patrol leader is Skinny Miller. His front 
name is Gabriel, only he does not use it any, except 
sometimes, when we are bandits, he calls himself 
Gabe. When he does that, he is something fierce. 

The summer before this history begins, Mr. Nor¬ 
ton, our Scoutmaster, had got us to join the Boy 
Scouts and the Band became Raven Patrol. Then 
the Gingham Ground Gang joined as Eagle Patrol, 
and there we were all tied up together so that we 
couldn’t fight any more, because Boy Scouts only 
can fight the enemy. 

The map doesn’t say anything about them, but 
we think more of Peck’s Falls than of all the rest 
of the geography except Bunker Hill Monument, 
where some of Skinny’s ancestors fell. He thinks 
a lot of Bunker Hill Monument. You see, our cave 


6 Skinny Gets a Letter 

is in Peck’s Falls woods, where we can hear the 
roar of the falls and, when we look out, can see the 
clear mountain water tumbling between rocks. 

When you want to walk up to Peck’s Falls, you 
can go the longer way around, past the old Quaker 
Meeting House, then south on the west road until 
you come opposite the woods; or you can go straight 
back from Park Street, through Phillips’s or Black- 
inton’s orchard, and over the hill and across, until 
you come out on the west road, opposite the falls. 
Then you walk up a road that comes down the 
mountain-side, until you see two red houses stand¬ 
ing close together on the right-hand side. 

That isn’t the p^ce; but watch, and when the 
folks are not looking, go between those houses and 
squeeze through the bars: then follow along a 
stream until you come to a barb-wire fence on the 
edge of the woods. The Band knows where there 
is a hole in that fence with a tiny path on the other 
side, leading through a tangle of blackberry bushes 
and underbrush. It winds among the trees, the 
roar of falling water growing louder and louder all 
the time, until, after a few minutes, you come out 


Skinny Gets a Letter 7 

all of a sudden into an open space and see the falls, 
with Pulpit Rock reaching across in front. 

If it doesn’t make you dizzy, you can edge your 
way carefully along the narrow rocky ledge, until 
you are in front of the falls, leaning back against 
the rock for all you are worth and almost holding 
your breath. For it is fifty feet or more, straight 
down to a shallow pool of clear water and a rushing 
stream, and from the woods far above, a mountain 
brook leaps and tumbles from rock to rock, now out 
of sight behind some ledge, then dancing and foam¬ 
ing in the sunshine, but all the time laughing and 
singing, until it falls with a roar into the pool 
below. 

Say, when Benny jumped off the end of Pulpit 
Rock, with the tramp chasing—but I have told all 
about that once in the doings of the Band. 

“ Fellers,” said Skinny, after we had watched 
the falls as long as we wanted to and then had 
made our way back off the rock, “ the hour has 
struck. To the cave, and mum’s the word! ” 

We made our way down the steep side of the 
ravine, following a narrow path, until we came to 


8 Skinny Gets a Letter 

the level of the brook below the falls. In front of 
us, on the edge of the water, was a big rock sticking 
out of the ground, with a tree growing from the 
top. 

Skinny looked up and down to see if all was 
clear. 

“ Bill,” said he, “ you guard the path and let no 
one come up without the countersign.” 

“ Without the which ? ” 

“ Without the password.” 

“ What is the password ? ” asked Bill. 

But Skinny was inside the cave by that time and 
did not hear. It was a good thing for Bill, too, 
because it makes Skinny mad to have us ask ques¬ 
tions. 

Bill came in last and we all sat there on the 
sandy floor of the cave, waiting to find out about 
the meeting. 

“ Pedro—I mean the secretary will call the roll,” 
said Skinny. 

“ Skinny,” I called, “ Bill, Hank, Benny, Chuck, 
Harry, Wally.” 

“ We are all here,” I told him, “ counting me.” 


Skinny Gets a Letter 9 

“ Fellers,” said Skinny, “ I don’t know whether 
we are Scouts or bandits or Injuns, but we want to 
have some fun as soon as school lets out, whatever 
we are.” 

“ You bet! ” we yelled. 

“ Pedro, you are secretary. There can't any¬ 
body read your writin’, but we can hear and you 
can tell us about the doings of the Band.” 

“ I guess everybody here knows about them al¬ 
ready,” I said. “ We were it.” 

He stood up, until his head nearly reached the 
top of the cave, folded his arms, and looked fierce. 

“ Am I leader of this patrol, or ain’t I ? ” said he. 

“ You’re leader, all right, but you’re crazy with 
the heat,” I told him. 

“Shut up, Pedro, can’t you?” said Bill. “We 
want to hear about our deeds. They listen good.” 

So I had to do it. 

“ A long time ago,” I began, “ about three years, 

I guess, Tom Chapin found this ’ere cave, and we 
formed a band of bandits, with Tom as captain. 
We had all kinds of fun that summer and Tom 
got chased by a bull, when he tried to paralyze it 


io Skinny Gets a Letter 

by the power of the human eye, like the school 
reader says, and we got lost on Greylock, and we 
found some hidden treasure.” 

“ Put in about licking the Gingham Ground 
Gang,” said Bill, when I stopped to get my breath. 

“ Skinny, I mean Mr. President,” said Benny 
Wade, “ we licked ’em all right, but they are Scouts 
now, so that doesn’t count.” 

“ Skip the fightin’ part,” said Skinny. “ But, just 
the same, we can lick ’em again any day of the 
week and don’tcher forget it.” 

He swung his arms fierce and you couldn’t hear 
anything for a while after that. Then I went on: 

“ When Tom went away to school with the money 
which we had found, Skinny became captain and 
he is a good one. We built a dam to get the flood 
out of our cave and we smoked out a tramp.” 

“ We could have drownded him out,” said Bill. 
“ Only we didn’t want to spoil the dam.” 

“ And the next summer some of us went out to 
Ralph Baxter’s in Illinois, and went down the river 
in a boat and camped out at Starved Rock, on Il¬ 
linois River. Hank found a pearl in a clam shell 


Skinny Gets a Letter 11 

and Skinny lassoed a robber who tried to steal it. 
Last summer we joined the Boy Scouts and Mr. 
Norton, our Scoutmaster, took us on a hike over 
Florida Mountain, as far as Connecticut River. 

4t And now,” I went on, sitting down, “ it’s ’most 
vacation time again and we want to have some 
more fun before we get so old that we can’t. I’m 
going on fourteen, already.” 

“ Now you’ve said something, Pedro,” called out 
Benny. “ I’m ’most twelve and I can remember 
when I was only nine.” 

“ Oh, shucks! ” said Skinny. “ Who cares about 
gettin’ old? Now, listen, and mum’s the word! ” 
With that he pulled a letter out of his pocket and 
opened it slowly to give us time to be surprised. 

“ Do you remember I told you about my cousin 
Dick out in Indiana? Here is what he says, or 
part of it: 

“ Valparaiso, Ind., May 26. 

“ Dear Skinny : 

“ I have got a scheme better than any stunt you 
ever pulled off. Bring the Band out here this sum¬ 
mer. We have all kinds of little lakes around here 
and I know where I can get some tents. We’ll 


12 


Skinny Gets a Letter 

camp out on one of the lakes and have the time of 
our lives. They are trying to organize some Boy 
Scouts here and your coming will help it along and 
that is good Scout work, ain’t it? 

“ It needn’t cost so much. There will be cheap 
rates to Chicago and we can earn a lot of money 
picking huckleberries. There is a big huckleberry 
marsh near one of the lakes and when the berries 
are ripe they want all the pickers they can get. We 
can earn enough to take care of all the expenses of 
the camp and then some. 

“ What do you say ? 

“ Your cousin, 

“ Dick.” 

“ P.S.—Alice Laurence’s mother, the girl you 
saved when she fell over the edge of the canyon at 
Starved Rock, has rented a cottage on one of the 
lakes for the summer.” 

We didn’t say a word when Skinny had finished 
reading, except Bill, and he didn’t say anything, 
but he stood on his hands and played a tune with 
his feet against the roof of the cave where it sloped 
down, and we knew what he meant. 

“ It’s a good scheme,” I said. “ Only our folks 
may not let us do it. It’s ’most as far as we went 
before.” 


Skinny Gets a Letter 13 

“ Everybody that wants to do it, holler,” said 
Skinny. 

An awful roar went out the hole that leads into 
the cave and floated down through the ravine. 

“ Let’s earn money, Saturdays,” said Hank, “ un¬ 
til it’s time to go. We can mow lawns and hoe 
gardens and do all kinds of things.” 

We all gave a groan at that, but it seemed the best 
way and that is what we decided to do; but first we 
had to find out if our folks would let us go. 

Sunday afternoon, I heard a whistle out in front 
of the house and when I went out, I found Skinny 
looking as if he had lost his best fish pole. 

“ They won’t let me do it,” said he, as soon as 
he saw me coming. 

“ Same here,” I told him. 

“ Folks are always thinking that a boy is going to 
get into trouble. Why, look at the Band. Nothing 
ever happened to us—nothing much, I mean. We 
never got killed yet nor drownded.” 

“ I asked Pa to go with us, if he was afraid to 
let us go alone.” 

“ Good for you! What did he say ? ” 


14 Skinny Gets a Letter 

“ He said he'd like to go, all right, and if we 
would camp out in the back yard, he’d do it.” 

“ I wish Mr. Norton would go.” 

“ Let’s ask him. He’s got to go somewhere, 
hasn’t he? Everybody goes on a vacation, and he 
said last summer that maybe he’d take our whole 
troop out this year.” 

“We don’t want the whole troop. They couldn’t 
all go, anyhow. I don’t believe he’d go so far.” 

“ Well, he told us to go to him with our troubles, 
and this is trouble, all right.” 

“ There he comes now,” shouted Skinny, and, 
sure enough, there was Mr. Norton, our Scoutmas¬ 
ter, coming down Park Street, as big as life. We 
both made a run for him, hardly stopping to give 
the Scout salute. 

“ What’s this ? Am I being surrounded ? ” he 
asked, laughing. 

“ You can’t go until you promise to do it,” said 
Skinny. “ Will you promise? ” 

“ Being in something of a hurry, I guess I’ll have 
to promise,” said he, with his eyes twinkling. 


“ When do we start ? ” 


i5 


Skinny Gets a Letter 

“ How did you know about it? ” we asked him. 

“ I only judged by the symptoms. It’s almost 
vacation time and that’s the open season for 
Scouts.” 

Then we told him about Dick’s letter and how 
our folks didn’t want us to camp out on any lake 
alone. You see, we were not used to lakes, all we 
had being Hoosac River, which you can wade across 
in some places in summer. 

“ I’ll tell you what,” said he, after thinking it 
over, both of us watching him anxiously. “ This 
is a matter that cannot be decided offhand. It is 
different from a trip to Peck’s Falls, or even from 
a hike over the mountain. Let’s leave it in this 
way: You find out what it will cost and whether 
your folks will let you go if I go along to look 
after you, and find out how many of you can go. 
We’ll have a meeting of the patrol at my house 
next Saturday night. It happens that I am expect¬ 
ing a letter from Chicago any day now and if it 
says what I think it will say, I shall have to go out 
there this summer, anyhow. I must hurry along 
now. Don’t forget Saturday night.” 


16 Skinny Gets a Letter 

Forget it! We didn’t think or talk of anything 
else all the week. Just as soon as my folks heard 
that Mr. Norton might go along, they gave in right 
away. 

“ It’s kind of expensive, but we’ll call it a part 
of your education,” said Pa, “ and charge it up to 
profit and loss. That trip last summer with Mr. 
Norton was a great thing for you, John, and I must 
say that you have been a different boy since you 
joined the Scouts.” 

When Saturday night came, it was an excited 
bunch of Scouts that rang the bell at Mr. Norton’s 
house. He opened the door and stood there, smiling 
down at us; then motioned for us to go in. 

“ Now, boys,” said he, when we all had sat down, 
“ which shall it be first, business or pleasure? Mrs. 
Norton is trying to keep two quarts of ice cream 
from melting. How about it, Captain?” 

“ Why can’t we do both? We want to know 
about the trip and it wouldn’t be right to let that 
ice cream melt.” 

Before Mr. Norton could answer Mrs. Norton 
came in with a tray full of dishes, heaped up with 


Skinny Gets a Letter 17 

ice cream, and that settled it. I have noticed that’s 
the way Ma settles things at our house. She doesn’t 
talk about them; she just does them. 

We didn’t talk much of any for a few moments; 
then Mr. Norton stopped long enough to say, “ Well, 
boys, it is settled so far as I am concerned. I’ll 
have to go to Chicago whether you do or not. I 
could run in to the city from the camp very easily, 
as often as my business made it necessary. How 
about you ? ” 

“ I can go,” I told him. Skinny said that he 
could and, one after the other, all the boys said 
the same except Hank Bates. He sat there, quiet, 
with his face kind of working, as if he was trying 
to keep from crying. I knew what the trouble was, 
for he had told me. 

“ How about you, Hank ? ” 

“ I can’t go,” said he, wiping his eyes and pre¬ 
tending it was sweat. “ The folks said they would 
like to have me be with you, but it is going to cost 
too much money. Father has been sick, you 
know.” 

“ I wish your father could go with us,” Mr. Nor- 


18 Skinny Gets a Letter 

ton told him. “ It would do him a world of good, 
but I suppose that is out of the question.” 

He waited for a moment, then went on, “ Isn’t it 
fortunate how things happen sometimes? I need 
someone to help me before I go and after I get 
back. It will take quite a bit of your time, but it 
will be worth the price of a round-trip ticket to me. 
What do you say, will you help me out? ” 

Hank got up with a funny look on his face, gave 
the Scout salute, and then started for the door. 

“ I must be going now,” said he, with a queer 
little quiver in his voice. “ I want to tell the folks.” 
In another second he was going down the street 
on a run. 

That is how I came to be writing this history and 
that is how eight bandits, Injuns, or Scouts, from 
the northwest corner of Massachusetts, came to be 
camping out on Long Lake, near the northwest 
corner of Indiana. 


CHAPTER II 


OFF FOR LONG LAKE 

T HERE are more lakes around Valparaiso 
than you could shake a stick at. Not that 
you would want to shake a stick at any of 
them except, of course, a fish pole. We shook a 
lot of those. 

Dick met us at the depot one forenoon late in 
June. We thought it would paralyze the natives, 
when we piled off the train, yelling like Indians, Bill 
Wilson doing his best, but they never noticed it. 
You see, they have a college there, or something, 
and are used to such things. 

It was just as Dick said. There are all kinds 
of lakes around Valparaiso. They are small lakes, 
except Lake Michigan, which is about fifteen miles 
away. That seems like the ocean, it is so big. The 
others are smaller and that is what Mr. Norton 
likes about them. 

19 


20 Off for Long Lake 

“ The beauty of a lake,” he explained, “ lies 
largely in its shore line, because water looks much 
the same everywhere. When the shores are so far 
away that you can’t see them plain, the lake isn’t 
half as pretty as when you can look across and get 
on to its curves.” 

Anyhow, these lakes are pretty, as you will find 
out for yourself if you ever go there. First, there 
is Sager’s Lake on the south edge of the city. That 
is almost as pretty as Peck’s Falls. A small stream 
has been dammed and the water has filled a little 
valley, between two wooded bluffs. 

Then, beginning about three and one-half miles 
north of the city, there is a whole string of lakes. 
Flint, Long, and Canada open into each other. 
Wahob comes pretty near opening into the others, 
only it doesn’t, and there are a whole lot of little 
ones, which don’t open into anything. We didn’t 
find out about them all at once. Whenever we’d 
think we had found them all, we would go out on 
a hike some day and discover another. 

We had taken a train that would land us 
in Valparaiso in the forenoon in order to have 


Off for Long Lake 21 

plenty of time to get our camp ready before 
dark. 

“ We don’t want any hotel bills, if we can help 
it,” Mr. Norton told us, “ although there are a num¬ 
ber of hotels on the lake, I understand, where we 
can put up if necessary.” 

“ Hotel nothin’! ” said Skinny. “ What’s the 
matter with sleeping on the ground and looking up 
at the stars and things ? The Band didn’t have any 
hotel or tent, I guess, or anything but bushes, that 
time we camped out at the old mill on Fox River, 
and we didn’t have any hotel when we did the hike 
stunt to get a First-class Scout’s badge.” 

“ You slept in a barn,” Bill told him, “ that’s 
what you did, and hay is different from bare ground, 
and a lady gave you your breakfast in the 
house.” 

That was so. Skinny did sleep in a barn and he 
worked for a farmer’s wife enough to pay for his 
breakfast. The rest of us didn’t find any barn and 
we slept out of doors and cooked our own break¬ 
fast, which was great fun, only scary. 

u Aw, g’wan!” said Skinny, “what if I did? 


22 Off for Long Lake 

There is nothing in Scout law against sleeping in 
a barn, is there? I lassoed a bear on the way back, 
didn’t I? How many of you fellers dast lasso a 
bear?” 

“ You were up in a tree, though, and didn’t dast 
come down.” 

“ It looks some like a storm,” said Mr. Norton, 
winking at me. “ Bill, suppose you look for a 
wagon to carry our stuff in.” 

“ I guess you won’t go to any hotel when I’m 
around,” Dick told us. “ Only you’ll have to sleep 
on the floor at our house, because we haven’t beds 
enough for so many. You are to come up to the 
house for dinner, anyhow. The folks said so. 
There is an electric railway to the lakes. Bill, tell 
the man to take your trunks and things to the 
station and the car will drop them off near where 
we are going to camp.” 

“ That is a good plan,” said Mr. Norton, “ and 
dinner will taste good. Now, if Dick will tell me 
where to go, I’ll order some supplies and have them 
sent on in advance with the rest of the things. We 
found out last summer that boys on camping trips 


Off for Long Lake 23 

develop some wonderful appetites. I’ll pay for the 
things myself, for I presume you boys are pretty 
near ‘ broke,’ but I shall expect each of you to pay 
me back for your share, either when you get to 
picking berries, or after you reach home.” 

He was right, too. I mean about the being broke 
part. I only had a few dollars left, and the other 
boys were the same. 

“ I think it would be well to go over to the Court 
House,” said he, afterward, “ and see about a fish¬ 
ing license. I understand that a license fee is 
charged for fishing in the lakes.” 

“ I ain’t going to pay anything just for catching 
a few fish in a lake,” said Skinny. “ This is a 
free country, I guess.” 

We all thought the same about it, but Mr. Norton 
told us that if we were going to fish we would have 
to take out a license. “ I think you will want to 
do some fishing,” said he, “ before the summer is 
over. One of the first lessons a Scout should learn, 
is that laws should be obeyed. This is a free coun¬ 
try, in one sense, as Skinny says, but that doesn’t 
mean that everybody can do just as he pleases, re- 


24 Off for Long Lake 

gardless of law. What is law? Can anybody tell 
me? ” 

“ Law is the things you can’t do,” Bill told him. 

“Well, not altogether that. It is the thing you 
can do, sometimes. This country is governed by 
the people, isn’t it? Well, law is the will of the 
people. The people of Indiana have said that a 
fishing license of one dollar must be paid except 
by those living in this or the adjoining counties. 
We live in Massachusetts and we must pay a small 
license fee or violate the law, and we don’t want 
to do that. One of the greatest dangers which our 
country is facing is disregard for law. Some people 
have so much money that they think they are bigger 
than the law. Others have so little that they seem 
to think that the law does not apply to them.” 

“We haven’t much,” said Benny, “ and a dollar 
is a whole lot.” 

“ Well, I’ll advance the fee, and trust to your 
honesty, when the berries get ripe. And I begin 
to see,” he added, laughing, “ how Charles H. Nor¬ 
ton, Scoutmaster, stands a good chance of going 
‘ broke ’ himself.” 


Off for Long Lake 25 

It seemed strange to be so far from home and 
away from Bob’s Hill, though it wasn’t the first 
time. Dick’s folks seemed glad to see us and gave 
us a fine dinner. Then we started for our camp, 
all dressed in our Scout uniforms. It made people 
stare to see us march down Main Street and Skinny 
was real chesty over it. 

“ Maybe we’d better be Injuns,” he whispered, 
“ seeing as how we are out West.” 

“ We can’t in these clothes,” Benny told him. 
“ Let’s be Scouts to-day and Injuns to-morrow.” 

“ And bandits every day in the week,” said 
Bill. 

Before we could stop him, he opened his mouth 
and gave a yell that brought folks to their front 
doors. Then he turned to us and called: 

“ Everybody. One, two, three-” 

Say, Valparaiso knew we were in town before 
we had gone four blocks. 

Our patrol has the raven for its patrol animal, 
raven being a high-toned name for crow, and the 
caw of the crow is our signal. It sounded as if 
a whole flock of crows had broken loose. It made 



26 Off for Long Lake 

us feel better and march straighter to hear it, be¬ 
cause there is something about a crow that makes 
us think of Greylock and the Bellows Pipe, Bob’s 
Hill, and home. Some folks don’t like crows—be¬ 
cause they don’t sing, I guess. They don’t claim 
to sing, and don’t try; but Patrol I, Troop 3 of 
Massachusetts would rather hear them caw, soaring 
around in the Bellows Pipe between the mountains, 
than the best canary that was ever shut up in a 
cage. 

Lots of times sitting in our cave at Peck’s Falls, 
talking about the things that boys talk about, we 
hear a faint caw coming up from the mountain-side, 
then an answering caw nearby, and our hearts swell 
up until it seems as if we own the whole mountain 
and all outdoors, and without any signal at all, we 
all commence cawing to beat the band. 

“ We’ll go up to our camping place in the inter- 
urban car,” said Mr. Norton. “ It isn’t quite regu¬ 
lar, I suppose, but we are in a strange land and we 
want to get our camp in shape before dark. Dick 
has our place all picked out, I understand, and has 
secured permission from the owners for us to camp 


Off for Long Lake 27 

there. From what he has told me it seems all 
right.” 

The car passed Flint Lake on the right, or east 
side, in the rear of some cottages; then curved 
around the end like a great letter S, and went down 
the west side of another lake, which Dick said was 
Long. 

“ Lake View! ” called the conductor, and that was 
our station. 

We carried our stuff down to the water and put 
it in a couple of rowboats which Mr. Norton had 
hired. He and Skinny rowed the boats, while we 
boys walked along the shore, until we came to a 
level, grassy open place, where a big tree was grow¬ 
ing, about one hundred feet from the water. 

Dick stopped us there, and in a few moments Mr. 
Norton beached his boat. 

“ Now, John,” said he, “ if you and Dick will 
take the boat and bring that bale of straw which 
was unloaded from the car at the station, the rest 
of us will get busy with these tents.” 

Where we camped was on the Anderson farm. 
Dick knew Mr. Anderson and he said that we might 


28 Off for Long Lake 

camp there as long as we wanted to, if we wouldn’t 
cut his trees. It is a good thing to camp near a 
farmhouse that way, where you can get milk, butter, 
and eggs, and things like that. We found another 
farm where they raised all kinds of bees and sold 
us honey, but that was afterward. 

We didn’t try to do anything that day more than 
get the tents up, ready to sleep in, and a place 
where we could cook our supper and to bring some 
milk and eggs from the farmhouse. By that time 
we were ready to eat. We were ’most always ready 
to eat on that trip, especially Skinny. We surely 
were hungry by the time a fire had been made 
and the bacon, coffee, and bread and butter were 
ready. 

“ I wouldn’t approve of coffee at night for you, 
as a rule,” Mr. Norton told us, “ but out in the open, 
working and playing hard in the pure air, they 
couldn’t keep you awake with a shotgun.” 

He was wrong about that. I mean the keeping 
awake part, for when night came we lay there lis¬ 
tening to the noises on the lake and talking about 
what we would do in the morning, until Mr. Nor- 


Off for Long Lake 29 

ton told us we’d better go to sleep or we would 
scare the fish. 

But before that, after we had eaten supper and 
washed up the dishes and while it was still light, 
we set out a flagpole, which Skinny had cut with 
his hatchet, and christened our camp. We had a 
name all picked out for it before we left 
home. 

Hank, who is great on making inventions, rigged 
up the pole with an extra fish line so that we could 
stand on the ground and draw up the flags. When 
all was ready, Skinny went down to the lake and 
brought up a dipper of water. Benny took hold of 
the end of the strings, ready to pull, and the rest 
of us stood in front in a row, with our hats off, 
while Mr. Norton, smiling to himself, watched us 
from a seat which we had made by driving two 
sticks into the ground and putting a board across. 

“ You give the signal, Bill,” said Skinny. Bill 
is assistant patrol leader. 

“ Pull! ” yelled Bill, so loud that they heard him 
at the hotel across the lake. 

Benny pulled and in a moment the American flag, 


30 Off for Long Lake 

the Stars and Stripes, the prettiest flag in all the 
world, went fluttering to the top of the pole. 

How we all yelled then! I saw Mr. Norton take 
his hat off and stand there with the rest of us. 

“ Fellers,” said Skinny, waving one hand for us 
to keep still, “ we are a long way from home, but 
we are still in the United States of America and 
don’t you forget it. Don’t you never go back on 
the flag. Will you stand by the Stars and Stripes, 
and Bunker Hill, and the Fourth of July? Now, all 
together-” 

“ We will,” we yelled. 

Then Skinny stepped forward with the dipper of 
water, his eyes shining and his cheeks red like an 
apple. “ I, Skinny Miller,” he said, “ leader of 
Raven Patrol, No. i, Troop 3, Massachusetts, name 
this camp f Bob's Hill / and all those that don’t like 
it will do their kicking now, or forever after hold 
their peace.” 

As he spoke, he dashed some water from the 
dipper on each tent, then folded his arms like a 
bandit and looked fierce. 

“ I have spoken,” said he. “ Let be what is.” 



3 1 


Off for Long Lake 

“ Pull! ” shouted Bill, again. 

Benny pulled once more and soon up went an¬ 
other flag, hanging limp at first, until the breeze 
caught it and floated it out so that all could read 
the words, “ Camp Bob’s Hill.” 

Then I gave the boys a little surprise I had been 
keeping to myself. Pulling it from a place where 
I had it hidden, I stepped to the largest tent and 
pinned upon it the silk banner which Mr. Norton 
had given us the summer before. In one corner 
was a black raven and the words, “ Patrol i, 
Troop 3, Massachusetts”; then, in large gold let¬ 
ters, the Scout motto, "Be Prepared” 


CHAPTER III 


GETTING THE CAMP READY 


W E spent the greater part of the next day 
fitting up our camp with everything we 
should need. 

“ We may as well be comfortable as not,” Mr. 
Norton told us. “If we were going to stay only 
two or three days, it wouldn’t pay to bother, but 
we expect to make this our home for some time to 
come and I am in favor of having floors in our 
tents. We are fortunate in being near a car line 
and probably can arrange to have the crew of the 
next car throw off what lumber we shall need for 
floors and other things, as they pass the camp.” 

That is what we did and we were very glad, 
every time it rained, that we had the floors, espe¬ 
cially one night when we came near being flooded 
out. When we had put in some extra stakes and 
fastened the tents down all around we felt that we 


32 


Getting the Camp Ready 33 

wouldn’t be willing to trade our camp with any 
king for his palace, marble halls, and all such foolish 
things. 

We didn’t stop to put flies on the tents, the first 
night. A fly is a sort of extra roof, which keeps 
most of the water off the real roof when it rains. 
We had one extra fly which we used as a canopy 
and under it we built a table and benches like those 
in picnic parks. 

When Mr. Anderson came down to see what we 
were up to, he told us that there were some small 
trees back in the woods, which we might cut, if 
we needed them to make chairs and tables for our 
kitchen. 

We brought up some trees about two or three 
inches thick and for a chair cut two pieces eighteen 
inches long for the front posts and two back posts 
thirty-six inches long. We fastened these together 
at the height of the front posts and nailed boards 
across for a seat; then we nailed a board across 
the other posts at the top for a back, put on some 
braces, and we had a good enough chair for any¬ 
body, with the seat eighteen inches from the ground 


34 Getting the Camp Ready 

and sixteen inches square. Besides these we put 
up a couple of hammocks to take it easy in and 
to sleep in if we should want to. 

We had brought a strong box with us full of 
things, with a lid on hinges. When partitions had 
been nailed in this box, it made a good cupboard to 
keep our table things in and our groceries and food. 
We put a padlock on and kept it locked but hid 
the key in a hollow in a tree. We were afraid that 
if somebody carried it he might not be around some 
day when we wanted to eat. 

“ I think that we’d better build an oven,” Mr. 
Norton told us, when we had things in pretty good 
shape. “ We ought to try a little baking on our 
own account. It will not always be convenient to 
go to town.” 

“ I could build one if I had some sheet iron,” 
said Hank, who is always making things. 

“ We shall not need sheet iron except a piece 
of stovepipe for a chimney. Maybe we can find an 
old piece up at the farmhouse. We could get along 
with flat stones, or bricks, but stovepipe would be 
easier and better.” 


Getting the Camp Ready 35 

“We found an old house with a tumbled down 
chimney when we went after milk and eggs,” said 
Benny. “ It stands in the middle of a field back 
there and looks as if nobody had lived in it for a 
long time. I saw a piece of stovepipe there.” 

“Just the thing! Suppose you take somebody 
with you for company and go after it, and let some¬ 
one else go to the farmhouse for a spade.” 

“ Where shall we build it? ” I asked, after some 
of the boys had started on a run. 

“ There are several ways to build a suitable oven. 
The one which I am going to try to make requires a 
hillside and that sloping ground over there is just 
the thing. I think we shall find clay enough in the 
soil. If not, I noticed something that looked like 
potter’s clay in the railroad cut up there and we 
can plaster the inside of the oven with that.” 

When the boys had brought a spade, Mr. Norton 
dug into the hillside, cutting it back until there was 
a smooth face straight up and down, several feet 
high. Then, at the bottom of the face, we dug a 
little tunnel straight into the hill, three or four feet. 

“ Keep the opening as small as you can, boys,” 


36 Getting the Camp Ready 

Mr. Norton told us, “ and widen it out on the in¬ 
side.” 

It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but we hollowed 
out the sides of the tunnel, until the floor was about 
two feet wide. Then we arched the roof, so that it 
was about sixteen inches from the floor in the center. 

“ Now, for the chimney,” said Mr. Norton, after 
we had stood back and looked at our work. “ First 
we must dig a small hole from the top down into 
the oven at the back end.” 

We did that; then put the stovepipe down and 
filled up the chinks around it. Doing this let some 
more dirt down into the oven, but it didn’t take 
long to clean it out. Finally, Mr. Norton had us 
bring water from the lake and wet the oven all 
over on the inside; then smooth off the muddy walls. 

“ I think that will do first-rate,” he said, after 
we had finished. “ We will leave it until to-morrow 
to give it time to dry. Then it will be ready for 
business and your Uncle Dudley will try to show 
you some bread like mother used to make.” 

“ How do you bake in that thing? ” I asked. 

" First, you build a fire in the oven and get it 


Getting the Camp Ready 37 

hot. After it has been well heated, pull the fire 
out and scrape out the ashes; then put your pans 
of dough inside. Cover the entrance with a board 
and plaster it over with mud to keep the heat from 
escaping. It will surprise you to see what a fine 
job of baking it will do.” 

We tried it the next day and many times after¬ 
wards and it worked fine, only I’d rather have the 
kind that Ma makes, any day in the week. 

u We have had so much fun building the oven,” 
said Mr. Norton next, “ what’s the matter with 
building a fireplace out of the way of the wind, 
one that will make cooking easy ? ” 

“ That sounds good to us,” Bill told him. 

“ All right. We have plenty of time to-day, but 
if you are tired of working we can get along with 
an ordinary fire for a day or two.” 

“ This ain’t working,” said Harry. “ It’s fun.” 
“ Very well. We shall need a lot of those bricks 
that Benny found in the old house, and if Skinny, 
I mean Gabriel, has his hatchet in good condition, 
we’ll use some more of the wood that Mr. Anderson 
so kindly offered to us.” 


38 Getting the Camp Ready 

“ Cut out the Gabriel part. Skinny is good 
enough for me. That’s what the fellers all call 
me. 

“ Well, Skinny, we can use the branches of a 
tree this time and cut them so that the tree will 
not be injured. We want two green posts about 
two inches thick, or three, and three feet long. 
Cut them with a fork, or crotch, at one end, as if 
you were getting them for a mammoth sling-shot. 
These are to be driven into the ground at the ends 
of the fire. Cut a green pole about the same thick¬ 
ness and long enough to reach from post to post, 
resting on the forks. While you boys are so pleas¬ 
antly employed, I’ll lie down here in the shade and 
think of something else for you to do.” 

We found him sound asleep under the tree when 
we had brought the things. He had been working 
hard all the year and we could not bear to wake 
him up, but he heard us pretty soon and opened his 
eyes. 

“ I declare,” he said, “ thinking is such hard work 
that I went to sleep over it. One of the best things 
about a vacation is that one can do pretty much as 


Getting the Camp Ready 39 

he pleases; work when he likes; play when he likes, 
and be as lazy as he wants to be.” 

With Mr. Norton telling us how, we drove the 
posts into the ground until they stood firm, just 
far enough apart so that the pole would reach from 
one to the other; then we flattened the pole at each 
end so that it would fit into the forks snug. 

“ Now, give me the spade,” said Mr. Norton, 
“ and I’ll do some digging to pay for the nap which 
I had.” 

He dug a trench between the posts about twenty 
inches wide and a foot deep and squared the sides 
and ends. Then we walled up the sides with bricks. 
At one end we built a little chimney of bricks, with 
a hole leading into it from the fireplace. Mr. Nor¬ 
ton drove the posts into the ground, until a kettle 
hanging from the pole would just clear the fire. 

We called it our “ stove ” and we felt proud of 
it when we had finished. It burned fine. The chim¬ 
ney gave it draft and, being below the surface of 
the ground, the wind did not bother it. We found 
that it saved fuel, for it did not take much wood 
to make a fire hot enough to cook by. 


40 Getting the Camp Ready 

“ The first one who goes to Valparaiso,” said 
Mr. Norton, “ should step into a hardware store 
and get three or four S hooks. They will cost only 
a few cents and will be a great help. Then we shall 
be able to handle the kettles without lifting the 
crane every time.” 

“ Guess what,” said Benny. “ What will we do 
when it rains ? ” 

“ Well, sir,” Mr. Norton told him, “ I gave that 
some serious thought while I was sleeping a short 
time ago. The thing to do is to have Skinny stand 
over the fire with an umbrella.” 

“ Nothin’ doin’! ” said Skinny. “ But I’ll tell 
you one thing. I hate to see all that fire being 
wasted. Let’s have some eats.” 

Everybody was willing. We had worked hard, 
although it was fun, and we were hungry. 

“ Mr. Norton,” said Skinny, after we had eaten 
all that we could and were lying around, too lazy to 
move. “ That is a bully, good stove. How did you 
find out how to make it? ” 

“ I read it in a book,” said he, winking at Bill. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE RAVENS FIND OLD FRIENDS 


« 


w 


ELL, fellows,” said Mr. Norton, a day 
or two later, “ we are all settled and 


there is plenty to eat on hand. I am due in Chicago 
to-morrow. I do not like to leave you; still, I do 
not see how you can get into trouble. There is a 
hotel across the lake; there is a telephone at An¬ 
derson’s, and an electric car passes right back of 
the camp. Best of all, you are Scouts, which means 
that you can take care of yourselves in almost any 
emergency, and, you know, a Scout’s honor is to 
be trusted, according to our laws.” 

“ Scouts can take care of other folks, too,” 
Skinny broke in. “ That’s what they’re for. We’ve 
been watching the lake all day to find somebody 
drowning, so that we could save them. We 
wouldn’t do a thing to ’em. Would we, fellers?” 

" The lake is the only thing that I am afraid of. 


41 


42 The Ravens Find Old Friends 

Water is different from land. But you boys can 
swim like ducks and these flat-bottomed boats are 
almost impossible to tip over. Besides, I am certain 
that if William really should set about it he could 
make them hear in Chesterton, or Valparaiso.” 

Bill opened his mouth at that and was going to 
try, but we hit him on the back so hard that he 
couldn’t. 

“ I may not be able to return to-morrow. Will 
you be afraid to stay alone one night? ” 

“ Who ? Us? ” said Skinny. “ The Band afraid ? 
—I mean the patrol? ” He picked up a stick and 
everlastingly pounded the enemy. 

“ I guess that I ought to be anxious about the 
party of the second part,” laughed Mr. Norton. 
“ Anyhow, I am going and I want you to take care 
of my boys. It seems to me that they are a little 
the best bunch of fellows who ever wore the Scout 
uniform.” 

“ Everybody caw! ” shouted Bill, before Skinny 
had a chance. 

The next morning, bright and early, Mr. Norton 
left us, we going with him as far as the car. 


The Ravens Find Old Friends 43 

Along in the forenoon, after we had been swim¬ 
ming and had fished a little and were lying around 
on the shore planning what to do next, Skinny 
asked a question that I had been wanting to ask all 
the time, only I was afraid that the other boys 
would make fun of me. 

“ What was that you wrote, Dick?” said he, 
as if he didn’t care much and had almost forgotten 
about it. “ Wasn’t somebody going to have a cot¬ 
tage around here? A girl or something?” 

“ Guess what, Skinny wants to lasso her,” 
shouted Benny. 

“ Aw, g’wan! I don’t, either.” 

“ It’s that Laurence girl you wrote about,” Dick 
told him. “ Don’t you remember ? The one who 
fell over the side of the canyon at Starved Rock 
and you boys pulled her up with a rope.” 

“ That makes me think,” said Skinny. “ Don’t 
you fellers ever go out without a rope. You never 
know when you’ll need it.” 

“ Where is her cottage? ” I asked. 

“ I don’t know. All I know is that I read in 
the Vidette —that’s our paper, you know—that 


The Ravens Find Old Friends 


44 

somebody with that name was going to spend the 
summer with her mother in a cottage on Flint Lake. 
I remember the name because part of it is like a girl 
and part like a boy.” 

“ Let’s track her,” said Benny, “ like we did that 
time at Starved Rock.” 

“ How are we going to track her ? ” 

“Well, we can hunt for her, can’t we? It will 
be like a game.” 

“ I’ll tell you what,” I said. “ Let’s walk clear 
around the lake on the beach. If we don’t see her 
anywhere we can go to every cottage and ask for 
a drink of water.” 

We took our fish poles along so that we could 
pretend to be fishing and Skinny carried his rope. 

We went clear around the lake, looking at the 
folks in swimming, until it made them mad, and 
hoping all the time that somebody would drown 
almost and give us a chance to pull him out and 
bring him back to life and all such things, which 
a Boy Scout knows about and lots of people don’t. 

We couldn’t find a girl that looked anything like 
Alice except once we thought we had found her. 


4 


The Ravens Find Old Friends 45 

She was standing waist deep in the water and 
away from everybody, with her back toward us, 
looking at a boat out on the lake, but we couldn’t 
see her face and were not sure. 

“ I’m going to lasso her, anyhow/’ Skinny whis¬ 
pered to us, and began to get his rope ready. “ It 
will surprise her some, I guess.” 

“ Great snakes! What if it ain’t her? ” said Bill. 
“ I ’most know it ain’t.” 

“ She’ll be surprised, all the same.” 

But just as he was going to throw she turned 
around and it was nobody that we ever had seen 
before, so we couldn’t lasso her. 

Then we started in on the cottages, asking for 
a drink, until Skinny said that he knew he would 
bust if he drank another drop, but we couldn’t find 
anybody that looked like the folks we were after. 

“ Guess what,” said Benny, after a while. “ Let’s 
ask everybody if they know where she lives.” 

“ You’ve got a head like a tack, Benny,” Bill 
told him. “ Let me feel of it.” 

But Benny dodged out of the way. 

“ I don’t like to go around asking about girls,” 


46 The Ravens Find Old Friends 

said Skinny. “ It doesn’t look good. Girls are all 
right, of course, but-” 

“ Ask for her mother,” I told him. “ We can pre¬ 
tend that we want to sell some huckleberries, and 
we do. They are getting ripe. I ate some yester¬ 
day.” * 

That was good sense, too, if I did say it, and 
that was what we did. The very third place that 
we asked, the woman said: 

“ Mrs. Laurence ? I think that she lives over 
there,” pointing to a cottage that stood a little back 
from the lake. “ She has a young daughter, hasn’t 
she?” 

“ Has she, fellers ? ” asked Skinny, solemnly, 
looking around at us. 

“ We want to sell her some huckleberries,” I put 
in, before anyone could answer. “ They are begin¬ 
ning to get ripe.” 

“ Huckleberries ? Are you selling huckleberries ? 
Good! You may bring me two quarts and be sure 
to get them here in time for supper. We are very 
fond of them. How much did you say they were ? ” 

Say, we hadn’t thought about that part and didn’t 



The Ravens Find Old Friends 47 

know what to tell her. She stood looking at Skinny 
and waiting for him to speak and all the time he 
was motioning for the rest ef us to do it. Finally, 
he said: 

“ Pedro’s the one that knows about it. He’s our 
secretary.” 

“ Are you the one they call Pedro ? ” she asked 
me. 

“ Yes, ma’am.” 

“ Well, how much are the berries? ” 

I had to say something. “ Fifty cents,” I told 
her. 

“ Fifty cents! What, a quart?” 

Skinny punched me and I knew that I must have 
made a mistake. 

“ Fifty cents for two quarts.” 

“ Sakes alive! ” she said. “ And they told me 
this was a cheap place to spend the summer. Well, 
I’ve got to have them, anyhow. My husband is 
coming out from Chicago with a friend.” 

“ Great snakes, Pedro! ” said Bill, after we had 
walked on. “ Now you’ve gone and done it. We’ve 
got to get her two quarts of huckleberries, some- 


48 The Ravens Find Old Friends 

where, and I don’t believe they are ripe enough to 

♦V 

pick.” 

Just the same, it gave us an idea that brought 
in a lot of money during the next few weeks. We 
took orders for berries at nearly every cottage and 
at the hotels, and delivered them fresh every morn¬ 
ing, but we never could get that price again. 

Now that we had found the place, we hated to 
go up, all but Dick. He lived around there and he 
didn’t know Alice, anyhow. So he was the one 
who went up. We told him to ask for a drink of 
water and we’d stand back out of sight and see who 
came out. 

“ I don’t want any more water,” said he. “ I 
have had almost a barrel full already.” 

“ Oh, go on, Dick,” Skinny told him. “ Be a 
good Scout. One more drink won’t hurt you any.” 

So Dick went up and knocked on the door, while 
the rest of us waited. We saw him knock two or 
three times; then he came back. 

“ Nobody there,” he said. 

There was nothing to do except to go back to 
camp, it being dinner time. Hank said that he was 


The Ravens Find Old Friends 49 

hungry enough to eat green huckleberries and he’d 
a notion to do it. 

“ You can laugh all you want to,” I told them. 
“ Those berries are getting ripe. I was over in 
the marsh yesterday and I never saw so many ber¬ 
ries before. We can get two quarts just as easy 
as not.” 

“ And get chased out by the man that owns 
them, and maybe put in jail. Folks that will charge 
a dollar for fishing in a little lake would do any¬ 
thing.” 

Before I could answer, Dick spoke up. “We 
don’t have to steal them,” said he. “ I know the 
man; we’ll find out how much he will charge us 
a quart, we to do the picking. Maybe some other 
folks will want berries. We can make a lot of 
money, if we work it right.” 

It was Hank’s turn to cook and he cooked a fine 
dinner. We ate it and then lay down in the grass 
on the shore of the lake, looking off across the 
water. Once in a while, a boat would float past, 
looking like two boats, one on the lake and another, 
just like it, upside down in the water. We could 


50 The Ravens Find Old Friends 

hear a crow cawing off somewhere and the 
tinkle of a cowbell in a field nearby. It was 
great. 

I don’t know why it is, but if we had to cook 
at home and to wash the dishes and slick up, it 
would be terrible, but out there by ourselves, with 
the woods nearby and the lake in front and the 
birds singing and the fish jumping and great white 
clouds floating overhead, like ships up in the air, 
and no school, or anything, somehow it was dif¬ 
ferent. Pa says that it is just the same with grown 
folks. He says they are only children, grown a 
little bigger, and that there is more or less Indian 
in all of us. 

“ Only,” he says, “ you boys can do pretty much 
what you please, and we older ones have to stay 
home and work and pay the bills. We haven’t time 
to play Indian.” 

But Skinny says that when the Band gets older 
we’ll live out in the woods all the time. Anyhow, 
we fooled around there an hour or two, talking 
about what we would do on the Fourth of July. 
Then Skinny went up to the tent for something 


The Ravens Find Old Friends 51 

and in a minute we heard him calling, excited-like. 

“ Gee-whilikins, fellers, come here quick! ” 

We chased up as fast as we could, Bill grabbing 
a stick on the way, because we didn’t know what 
the matter was. 

“ What is it? ” he shouted. “ A snake? ” 

“ Snake nothin’! Look there.” 

We looked where he was pointing and saw a 
piece of paper pinned on one of the tents. Hank 
hadn’t noticed it when he was getting dinner be¬ 
cause he didn’t have to go on that side. 

“ Who put it there? ” I asked. 

“ Never mind. Read the writin’ and you’ll find 
out. You read it, Pedro, you are secretary, and 
put it in the minutes of the meetin’.” 

“ Great fishes! ” I shouted, when I had begun to 
read. 

“ Read it out loud, you chump,” they told me. 
This is what I read. 

“ I have just seen your banner and am wondering 
if it is possible that you can be the Bob’s Hill boys 
from Massachusetts who camped out at Starved 
Rock, summer before last. If you are, I want to 


£2 The Ravens Find Old Friends 

see the boys who saved my little girl from an awful 
death, and that same little girl, grown some bigger, 
would like to see them, too. Whoever you are, I 
know that you are all right because you are Boy 
Scouts, so please come over to my cottage on the 
west side of Flint Lake this afternoon, prepared to 
stay to supper. 

“ Mrs. M. A. Laurence. 

“ P.S.—I’ll hang out a flag, so that you may 
know which cottage.” 

It’s funny how things happen sometimes, isn’t 
it? She and Alice had been out walking and had 
run across our camp at the very time we were look¬ 
ing for them. 

“ Fellers,” said Skinny, after everybody had read 
the letter. “ Those that are in favor of going, 
stand on one foot and hop three times.” 

There was great hopping for a minute. Some 
of the boys didn’t know Alice, but the supper part 
sounded good to them and they hopped as hard as 
anybody. 

“ You haven’t hopped yourself, Skinny,” I told 
him, after I had counted the vote. 

“ I don’t have to,” said he. “ I’m leader of the 


The Ravens Find Old Friends 53 

patrol and captain of the Band, ain’t I ? But will 
I go? Will I be there? Will I eat? ” 

Then he straightened up, folded his arms like 
a bandit, and commenced to speak a part of his 
school piece: 

“ The boy, oh, where was he? 

Ask -” 


That was as far as he got, for just then Bill mo¬ 
tioned to us and we all grabbed him and started 
for the lake. He broke away in a minute and ran 
back; then beckoned for us to come. 

“ All I’ve got to say,” he told us, “ is right there 
on the tent.” And he pointed to our Scout motto, 
“ Be Prepared.” 

“ Now,” said he, “ let’s go swimming.” 

About three o’clock we went over to where the 
huckleberry man lived and told him what we 
wanted. He laughed when he heard about the 
woman. 

“ I’ll tell you what,” said he, “ I’ve great respect 
for boys who can charge twenty-five cents a quart 


54 The Ravens Find Old Friends 

for huckleberries and get away with it,—so much 
so that I am going to let you have those two quarts 
for nothing. But first I want you to promise to 
help me pick the crop, commencing day after to¬ 
morrow morning. I’ll give you three cents a quart 
and you certainly will come in handy.” 

We promised to do it, only Skinny told him that 
we wouldn’t work on the Fourth of July for any¬ 
body and Dick arranged so that we could pick and 
sell to the people in the cottages and hotels, when 
we wanted to. It was good fun, too, only pretty 
hot work, sometimes, and we made a lot of money. 
We turned it all over to Mr. Norton to pay for our 
fishing licenses and for things to eat. 

The huckleberries grew in a marsh, north of Long 
Lake, just before you get to Wahob. That marsh, 
the owner says, is the most valuable part of his 
farm. 

We all pitched in and soon had our two quarts 
and two more which we paid the man for. We 
wanted them for Mrs. Laurence. Then we started 
for Flint Lake. 


CHAPTER V 


ENLISTING FOR THE WAR 

S KINNY, Bill, Hank, Benny, and myself were 
acquainted with Mrs. Laurence and Alice. 
We met them down near Starved Rock in Illinois, 
the summer that we were camping there. They 
were Chicago people and were spending the summer 
at a farmhouse. Once when we were having trouble 
with a tramp, Alice saw us through some bushes 
and brought us help. That is how we became ac¬ 
quainted. 

One day after that she fell over a cliff and would 
have been killed if she had not caught in a small 
tree that was growing out of the side of the canyon 
part way down. We started to let Skinny down 
to her with a rope, but he was so heavy that he 
nearly pulled us all over. As soon as we could get 
him back we let down the lightest one in the bunch, 
which was Benny Wade. Benny fastened the rope 
around her shoulders and we pulled her up while 


55 


56 Enlisting for the War 

he hung on to the tree. Then we let the rope down 
to him. It wasn’t anything much to do, but it made 
a great hit with Mrs. Laurence. 

Just the same, we felt bashful-like, especially the 
boys who did not know them. We wanted to go 
and didn’t want to, like when you want to go swim¬ 
ming and the water is cold. But when we had 
come near the cottage we began to feel different, 
for there was the flag, just as Mrs. Laurence had 
said, and under it was a banner with some printing 
on it. When we were close enough we could read 
the words: 

“ WELCOME TO THE BOYS OF BOB’S HILL.” 

It made us feel so good that we all stood around 
Skinny, and when he said three, gave our patrol 
signal, which is the call of our patrol animal. 

“ Caw! Caw! Caw! ” we yelled, as much like 
a crow as we could. 

Then the cottage door opened with a bang and 
out rushed Mrs. Laurence and Alice to meet us. 
We knew Mrs. Laurence in a minute. She hadn’t 
changed a bit. 


Enlisting for the War 57 

I thought she was going to cry at first. She 
grabbed Skinny and me; then caught sight of Benny 
and made a rush for him and pulled Hank and Bill 
from behind a tree, talking and laughing all the 
time. 

“ Gee, Pedro,” said Skinny, as soon as he could 
break loose. “ What if Alice grabs us that way! ” 

But she didn’t. She only shook hands and told 
us how glad she was to see us. And grown! Say, 
we hardly knew her. Two years make a lot of dif¬ 
ference with girls. 

“ Great snakes! ” Bill whispered. “ I hope she 
doesn’t fall over any cliff this time; we’d have hard 
work pulling her up.” 

“ Now, who are these other boys?” asked Mrs. 
Laurence. We had forgotten to introduce them. 

We had great fun that afternoon, talking over 
old times and getting acquainted with Alice all over 
again, and didn’t go back to camp until almost 
dark. 

“ Wait a minute, boys,” called Mrs. Laurence 
after we had started. And Alice came running up 
with a cake wrapped up in a newspaper. 


58 Enlisting for the War 

It was lonesome that night, with Mr. Norton 
gone, but we didn’t mind it much. After we had 
gone to bed, we could hear a piano going at the 
hotel on the other side of the lake and voices across 
the water. 

Early next morning we were awakened by 
Skinny. 

“ Gee-whilikins, fellers! ” he shouted. “ Come 
here quick.” 

We rushed out of the tents, still sleepy, and 
found him looking at the newspaper, which had 
been wrapped around the cake. 

“ I wasn’t going to eat any, honest,” he said, 
“ but I thought I’d see what kind of cake it was 
and if there were any raisins in it. What do you 
know about it? This paper says there is going to 
be war. We’re going down to lick Mexico. I’ve 
been so busy that I hadn’t heard of it.” 

Then he read to us what the paper said. It was 
all about that there was going to be a war with 
Mexico and they wanted to get more soldiers into 
the army. 

We were all excited about it and Skinny’s cheeks 


Enlisting for the War 59 

grew redder and redder, all the time we were eating 
breakfast. 

“ Fellers,” said he, when we had finished. “ We 
are a long way from Bob’s Hill but, betcher life, 
we are in the United States of America.” 

“ Course we are,” Benny told him. “ We are in 
Indiana and it’s a good place to be.” 

Skinny didn’t pay any attention. “ Have we 
forgotten Bunker Hill ? ” he said. 

“ Great snakes! ” said Bill, “ I came near for¬ 
getting Bunker Hill.” 

“Look here; those Mexicans call us 'Yankee 
pigs.’ Are we going to stand for that? ” 

“ It makes me mad,” I told him, “ but what can 
we do?” 

“ Do! We can enlist. That’s what we can do. 
We can go down there and clean them out. Can’t 
we?” 

“ Do you mean, join the army and be soldiers? ” 
asked Benny, in a scared voice and with his eyes 
sticking out like saucers. “ We don’t dast.” 

“ Betcher life, that’s what I mean. We’re Scouts, 
ain’t we, and the Boy Scouts were great stuff that 


60 Enlisting for the War 

time what Mr. Norton told us about, down in 
Africa, somewhere.” 

“ I remember, it was at a place called Mafeking, 
when General Baden-Powell was in command and 
the enemy had them surrounded,” I told him. 
“ The boys carried messages through the rain of 
bullets, and things like that, so that the men 
could keep on fighting. It was great. That 
was what started the Boy Scout movement in 
England.” 

“ Were they Negro boys? ” asked Dick, when he 
heard that it had happened in Africa. Dick had 
never been a real Boy Scout. 

“ They were English,” Benny told him, “ and 
they were not afraid of anything.” 

“We ought to be able to do it, if they could.” 

“ Betcher life,” said Skinny. “ We are Amer¬ 
icans, ain’t we? Look at what the Americans did 
to the English at Bunker Hill. They waited behind 
a fence until they could see the whites of the 
enemy’s eyes; then let ’em have it.” 

Skinny folded his arms and looked around at us, 
fierce; then began: 


Enlisting for the War 61 

“ Cannon to right of them, 

Cannon to left of them, 

Cannon in front of them 
Volleyed and th -” 

“ Aw, cut it out, can’t you?” said Bill. “ That 
wasn’t at Bunker Hill. It was some other fight. 
What’s the good of enlisting ? It will break up the 
camp.” 

" What do we care for the camp, when our coun¬ 
try needs us? Besides, we’ll have a bigger camp 
down in Mexico and the band will play after supper 
in the evening.” 

Skinny grabbed a stick and shouldered it like a 
gun; then he marched up and down like a soldier. 
Every time he came to the turn he would caw. Say, 
it sounded good to us, and we all found guns and 
marched after him. 

“ Where is the place to enlist ? ” asked Harry, 
after a while. We hadn’t thought of that. 

“ Where’s the place to do it, Dick ? ” said Skinny. 
“ You live around here and ought to know.” 

“ Search me. Maybe it’s at Mayor Sisson’s of¬ 
fice in Valparaiso.” 



62 Enlisting for the War 

“ We ought to have a meeting and take a vote,” 
I told them. “ It’s important.” 

Skinny looked disgusted. “ Voting is all right,” 
said he, “ when there is time; but where would Paul 
Revere have been if he had stopped to take a vote 
when the lantern was hung in the belfry, down in 
Boston, and how many votes did George Washing¬ 
ton take when he surrounded the enemy, I’d like 
to know ? ” 

“ Where did it all happen, Skinny?” asked Bill. 
“ I mean about Washington surrounding the 
enemy?” 

“ Never you mind where it happened. It hap¬ 
pened, all right, and there wasn’t any voting on it. 
I’ll bet you a million dollars there wasn’t.” 

“ But this is different,” I told him. “ We ain’t 
generals, or anything like that.” 

“ All right, then, vote on it if you have to, but it 
ain’t my style.” 

He grabbed his hatchet and pounded on the table. 
“ All that are in favor of going down to Mayor 
What’s-his-name’s office and ’listing to lick the 
Mexicans, say 4 Bunker Hill.’ ” 


Enlisting for the War 63 

We all said it except Bill. “ It ain’t that I’m 
afraid,” he told us. “ If anybody thinks that I’m 
afraid, just let me hear him tell me so. That’s all 
I’ve got to say about it. But if we’re going to fight, 
I’d rather fight Injuns. Besides, I promised Alice 
Laurence that I’d buy her an ice cream soda the 
first chance I had.” 

We all set up a yell at that and make a grab for 
him to duck him in the lake, but he got away from 
us. 

“ We’ll fight Injuns, all right,” Skinny told him, 
when we were quiet again. “ There are all kinds 
of Injuns in Mexico. You’ll get all the Injuns you 
want, and then some. I read it in a book.” 

That made it all right with Bill. He grabbed 
a knife out of the tent and scalped Indians around 
there for a minute and a half, yelling to beat the 
band. 

“ Guess what,” said Benny, as soon as he could 
make himself heard. “ It’s a good thing that Skinny 
didn’t ask us to say any of those Mexican names 
when we voted. We couldn’t do it. Bunker Hill 
is easy.” 


64 Enlisting for the War 

“ The Redcoats didn’t find it so easy. Let’s take 
a car down to Valparaiso; it will be quicker. We 
can get off at the edge of town and march in. It’ll 
look better. Now, let’s go swimming; there will 
be time before the car comes.” 

When we jumped off the car and formed in line, 
with Bill carrying the American flag and Skinny 
waving his hatchet, it made folks stare. We 
marched down the middle of the street and, as we 
didn’t have any drum or band, every little while 
Bill would let out a yell and shake the flag. It 
was great, and everybody rushed out of the houses 
to see us go by. One old soldier leaned out of a 
window and waved a flag at us. We all felt proud 
and Skinny was real chesty over it. 

“ The Band, I mean the patrol, is the stuff,” said 
he. “ Uncle Sam doesn’t have to call twice for 
fighters when we are around.” 

But when we reached the mayor’s office we kind 
of hated to go up, not knowing him, or any¬ 
thing. 

“ You go first, Dick,” we told him, “ and see if 
he is there. You live here, you know.” 


Enlisting for the War 65 

Dick came back in a minute. “ He’s there, all 
right,” said he, “ and he looks fierce. I guess he’s 
mad about something.” 

“ Great snakes! ” said Bill. “ I wish I hadn’t 
come. He’ll run us in; I ’most know he 
will.” 

“ If you are afraid,” said Skinny, “ give me the 
flag. He won’t dast touch the flag.” 

He grabbed it and started up the stairs, all of us 
following and everybody walking on tiptoe, so as 
not to make any noise. When we came to the door, 
which stood open, we stopped and tried to make 
Dick go in first, but he wouldn’t do it. Finally, 
we grabbed Skinny and pushed him in; then 
marched in after him. 

You ought to have seen Skinny when we pushed 
him in. He was scared, then mad; but when he was 
really in and the mayor was looking to see what 
all the racket was about, he braced up. We thought 
that the mayor was mad at first, but the flag fixed 
him. When he saw Skinny with the flag he seemed 
sort of paralyzed. 

“ Company, halt! ” shouted Skinny. 


66 Enlisting for the War 

We halted as soon as we could, making a lot of 
noise doing it, and stood there in a row in front of 
the mayor. 

“ Salute! ” 

We gave the Scout salute, and you needn’t believe 
me if you don’t want to, but the mayor saluted us 
back. He was a big man with whiskers and if he 
had had on a uniform would have looked like a 
general. 

“ What is the purpose of this invasion ? ” he 
asked, after we had finished saluting and were try¬ 
ing to think what to say. “ Is this an army or a 
committee? Aren’t you a little ahead of the game? 
Fourth of July isn’t until next week.” 

Skinny motioned for me to say something, being 
secretary, but I shook my head and Bill was looking 
out of the window. So he had to speak. 

“ Are you the mayor? ” 

“ I have that inestimable felicity, by virtue of 
the suffrages of my fellow-citizens,” said he. He 
wrote it down afterwards so that I could put it in 
the minutes of the meeting. 

“ To what do I owe the honor of this visit? ” 


Enlisting for the War 67 

“ We are Boy Scouts of America, Patrol 1, 
Troop 3, Adams, Massachusetts.” 

The mayor saluted again, when Skinny said that, 
and made a bow. 

“ This is an even greater honor than I supposed,” 
he said. 

Skinny swelled up over that and it made us 
all feel good. He nodded his head to us as if to 
say, “ Did you hear him ? What did I tell you ? ” 

“ Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “ We are camp¬ 
ing out on Long Lake and it’s great. Ain’t it, fel¬ 
lers ? I am patrol leader and captain of the Band. 
Bill is assistant patrol leader and Pedro is secre¬ 
tary.” 

“ What can I do for you, Captain ? I heard that 
there were some Scouts camping out at the lakes. 
I hope that there has been no trouble and that you 
approve of our fair city.” 

“ We want to enlist.” 

“ Enlist? Where? What for?” 

“ In the army. We want to help lick Mexico. 
We didn’t know about it until we read it this morn¬ 
ing, or we’d have come before.” 


68 Enlisting for the War 

Skinny pulled the newspaper out of his pocket 
and pointed at the big headlines. 

“ Let me see that paper a minute.” 

The mayor looked it over and handed it back. 

“ I don’t like to dampen your enthusiasm,” said 
he, “ but the truth should be spoken. The war is 
over. That paper is two months old.” 

It surprised us when he told us that and showed 
us the date, some time in May, and we didn’t know 
what to say. The mayor sat there a minute kind of 
chuckling to himself; then went on: 

“ Let me say this: If all the boys in the country 
are like you, and I believe that most of them are, 
this Nation need have no fears. I am proud of you. 
I have not the power to enlist soldiers; I only ap¬ 
point policemen and not many of them. The en¬ 
listing is done by agents of the government at what 
are called recruiting stations. But I am proud of 
you, just the same, and I want to shake hands with 
every one of you. Should any of you be arrested 
on the Fourth of July, send word to me and I will 
get you out.” 

“ The marshal at home,” Benny told him, “ came 


Enlisting for the War 69 

near arresting Pedro once because he sent in a fire 
alarm on the Fourth of July. We wanted them to 
ring the fire bell, along with the church bells, at 
four o’clock in the morning, to celebrate. They 
told us not to ring the church bells because it made 
folks mad to be waked up. Tom said—Tom was 
captain before Skinny was—Tom said that it would 
not be right not to ring it. He said for us always 
to stand by our country and the Fourth of July.” 

“And you stood by them, did you?” 

“ Well, I heard the bells ringing at four o’clock— 
fire bell and all.” 

“ I see,” he said. “ I’ve an idea that it would 
be a good plan to nail the city down while you are 
in our midst.” 

Then a thought came to him. “ We are going to 
have a parade on the Fourth,” he said. “ It will 
be a big one. There will be the police and fire 
departments and all kinds of floats, school children, 
a brass band, and I don’t know what all. I want 
you Scouts in the parade in full uniform, right back 
of the band. What do you say ? ” 

“ We say, yes,” Skinny told him, after we had 


70 Enlisting for the War 

whispered together. “We’ll be glad to do it; it’s 
for our country.” 

“ That’s the stuff. Report here at nine o’clock 
on the morning of the Fourth.” 

An hour later, when we were standing on a street 
corner, trying to make up our minds whether to 
walk back to camp or ride, we missed Bill and 
couldn’t find him anywhere. 

“ Guess what, maybe he has been arrested al¬ 
ready,” said Benny. “ We’ll have to tell the 
mayor.” 

“ Let’s walk back,” said Skinny. “ We’ll spend 
the money for ice cream soda. Maybe Bill will 
show up before we start.” 

We went into an ice cream store and then stood 
there, paralyzed. There was Bill, as big as life, 
eating ice cream soda with Alice Laurence. 


CHAPTER VI 


AROUND THE CAMPFIRE 


W HEN Mr. Norton came back from Chi¬ 
cago the next day, he found everything 
ready for a campfire. We had brought sticks from 
the woods back of us and across the lake, and when 
our Scoutmaster jumped off the car at Lake View 
station he found us waiting for him. 

“ You are all here, I see,” he said, as we walked 
through the fields back toward the camp. “ How 
did you get along ? ” 

It seemed to tickle him when he heard how near 
we had come to enlisting. 

“ Patriotism is all right,” he told us. “ Every 
man of us, every boy, should be willing to defend 
his country with his life, if need be, just as he 
would defend his home, but war is a terrible thing 
and fighting seems a poor way to settle disputes. 

Other people and other nations have certain rights 
71 


72 Around the Campfire 

which should be respected. It seems to me that 
you boys could do more good living for your coun¬ 
try than by dying for her. There is a patriotism 
of peace, which ought to be practiced more than 
it is. It is a patriotism which leads men to do the 
right thing for their country and their neighbors 
when the band is not playing and people are not 
applauding. What do you say, Captain?” 

“ I say so, too,” said Skinny, “ but, somehow, 
when I think of Bunker Hill I want to go out and 
beat up the enemy.” 

“ Napoleon,” put in Benny, “ he didn’t think that 
way, Mr. Norton. He waved his sword and went 
for ’em like sixty. I don’t know what they were 
fighting about, but it was great.” 

“ Napoleon could fight,” Skinny told him, “ but 
I’ll bet a million dollars that George Washington 
could have licked him with one arm tied behind 
his back.” 

“ That was because Napoleon was little and 
Washington was so much bigger.” 

“ In reading history,” said Mr. Norton, “ you 
will notice that many of the men who have had 


Around the Campfire 73 

the greatest influence on the world were small 
in stature. I came near saying most of them. 
Washington and Lincoln were large men, but I am 
inclined to think that they were exceptions to the 
rule.” 

“ Why is it? ” 

“ I don’t know, unless it is because the little fel¬ 
low works harder. Napoleon was first called the 
‘ little corporal ’ in derision and he started in to 
show them. I think that history will bear me out 
when I say that he certainly did show them. It 
is brain not stature that counts these days. A 
healthy body is necessary to a healthy brain and it 
is a good thing to be big and strong, but it is the 
man who can think and imagine and has high ideals, 
not the prize fighter, who does the most for the 
world.” 

“ What is this ? ” he asked, when we had 
come within sight of the camp and he saw the 
pile of wood. “ Are we going to have a camp¬ 
fire? ” 

We told him that we were and that we wanted 
him to tell a story. 


74 Around the Campfire 

“ Benny was asking me a question the other day 
and when I was in Chicago I stepped into the 
library and found out something about it, for fear 
that he would ask me again. Benny has a way of 
asking questions that keep me busy. He wanted to 
know how all these lakes came to be here for us 
to fish in. Suppose that I tell you something about 
that? ” 

It was growing dark when we finally lighted the 
fire and began with an Indian dance around it, while 
Mr. Norton looked on and laughed. 

“ I believe that you boys would have made first- 
class Indians/’ he said. 

Skinny led the way, waving his hatchet and 
making up Indian words to a song that he was 
singing, and we all circled around the fire after 
him. Then we threw ourselves down on the ground, 
where the firelight drove away the gathering shad¬ 
ows, and Mr. Norton began. 

“ Once upon a time,” he said, “ many, many thou¬ 
sand years ago, a big, old glacier that lived way 
up North came down to this part of the country 
for a visit.” 


Around the Campfire 75 

“ What is a glacier, Mr. Norton? ” asked Benny, 
getting up close to him. 

“ A glacier is a great body of ice. It came about 
in this way, so the wise men tell us, who can read 
the signs. Snow fell on the northern part of the 
American continent during hundreds of centuries 
and it never melted.” 

“ Gee! ” said Skinny. “ That was some snow. 
Say, it must have been deep. It would have been 
great for a fort, only it wouldn’t pack.” 

“ You are stoppin’ the story, Skinny,” Bill told 
him. “ Go on, Mr. Norton. What happened 
then?” 

“ Well, then it snowed some more, and the next 
day it snowed. Finally, in the course of thousands 
of years, perhaps, the great weight of the accumu¬ 
lated snow squeezed the bottom layers into a sort 
of porous ice. In time, this enormous field of ice 
became what we call a glacier and began to move.” 

“ Where were the people ? ” asked Benny. 

“ There were not any people around. It was too 
soon. God was getting the earth ready for them 
and He used the glacier as a huge plane and grind- 


76 Around the Campfire 

ing machine to plane off the surface of the earth 
and grind up the rocks into soil, so that the farmers 
in some far-off time might raise corn and wheat 
and other things to eat. 

“ It moved so slowly that if you had been there 
you hardly could have seen any motion at all, but 
gradually it slid toward the south and southwest. 
The way scientists can tell the direction it moved 
is by studying the grooves made by the rocks as 
they slid along.” 

“ Why does everything move south?” put in 
Benny again, before anyone could stop him. 

“ Hoosac River doesn’t,” Skinny told him. “ It 
flows north and it has no business to. There ain’t 
any sense in a river flowing north.” 

“ It is a good thing to go South in the winter 
time,” Mr. Norton went on, “ and it was winter 
in British America all the time those days. As the 
glacier moved along, great masses of partly decayed 
rock and clay from jutting cliffs fell upon it and 
stole a ride. Larger masses of rock became frozen 
into the ice, and acted as a plane or drag. Hills 
were smoothed off and valleys were filled in. Rock 


Around the Campfire 77 

was ground into gravel and, still finer, into soil, as 
the glacier made its way toward our camp. In this 
way several glaciers came down from the North at 
different times. The soil which they brought with 
them is called drift and it is this old drift that makes 
the farms of northern Indiana and Illinois so fer¬ 
tile. It varies in depth from 90 to 141 feet.” 

“ Is that the way God made the world ? ” 

“ That was one way. He had many different 
tools and forces at work and they still are working. 
He isn’t through with creation yet, by any means. 
Among other things, He put us here to help Him. 
We are sort of partners of the Almighty. Did you 
ever think of that? Isn’t that a big thing? Just 
think of that when you feel like doing something 
that will injure the business.” 

“Did the glacier scoop out these lakes?” asked 
Hank, after Mr. Norton had sat still a few mo¬ 
ments, thinking. 

“ Not exactly. It is thought that they were 
formed by the last of the glaciers which paid this 
part of the world a visit, or rather by one part of 
the glacier. The glaciers came down several times, 


78 Around the Campfire 

like an army overrunning the land. Finally, there 
would be some change in the climate and they 
would melt back again. Whenever a glacier had 
come down as far as it could, it halted long enough 
to deposit the stuff it was carrying and the accumu¬ 
lation is called a terminal moraine. The terminal 
moraine around Valparaiso is famous. 

“ The glacier’s action was something like that 
of a snow shovel. When you push a shovel through 
snow, piles of snow heap up in front and fall off 
at the sides, forming hills and ridges. That is 
what makes so many hills and valleys around here. 
The glacier pushed up great ridges in places. In 
other places it scooped out hollows and, here and 
there, it dropped off great heaps of gravel or soil 
and sometimes bowlders. There are great bowlders 
in many parts of the country, which cannot be ac¬ 
counted for except on the theory that they stole a 
ride on some old glacier, much as you boys catch 
on bobs in the winter, and when they dropped off 
they stayed there. 

“ In some places great sections of ice broke off 
from the main body and sank into the mass of 


Around the Campfire 79 

stuff the glacier was leaving behind. In the course 
of time this mass hardened and the ice melted. If 
you should bury a big cake of ice in the ground, 
Dick, what would it leave when it melted ? ” 

“ Mud.” 

“ I guess you are right about that, but that was 
not what I meant.” 

“ Water,” said Benny. 

“ You are getting warm, all right. What do you 
say, Hank ? ” 

“ A hole.” 

“ That is it. When those great masses of ice 
melted they left huge holes, which filled up with 
water from springs and from little streams which 
began to pour down the hillsides. It is thought that 
these beautiful lakes were all formed in that way. 
There are probably a thousand of such lakes in 
Indiana, all formed by glacial action. Some are 
little more than holes in the ground and they are 
called ‘ kettle hole lakes ’ in the geologies. One of 
the most famous of the kettle hole lakes is what 
people here call Bullseye Lake. It lies close to 
the roadside, between here and Valparaiso, and 


8 o Around the Campfire 

while it is less than a half acre in extent, it is very 

deep.” 

“ It hasn’t any bottom,” Skinny told him. “ A 
man told me so. And once a horse ran away and 
ran into it, wagon and driver and all, and they 
never were heard of again. There don’t anybody 
dast fool around Bullseye.” 

“ I know that is what people say, but these bot¬ 
tomless lakes will be found to have a bottom, prob¬ 
ably, if you go deep enough. Bullseye is forty-five 
feet deep, I am sure, and perhaps deeper. It is just 
a deep hole in the ground, filled with water.” 

“ How thick was that glacier? ” asked Harry. 

“ Probably five hundred feet.” 

“ Great snakes! ” said Bill. “ That was some 
cake of ice! What became of it?” 

“ When the glacier had come as far south as 
this, for some reason it did not come farther but 
began to melt back. It took a long time, of course, 
and as it melted a great body of water formed at 
the south end, which grew bigger and bigger, until 
it covered an enormous area. Geologists have 
named that great body of water, ‘ Lake Chicago.’ 


Around the Campfire 81 

“ Did you notice when you were camping on Il¬ 
linois River, at Starved Rock, that the river-way was 
much wider than the river itself and that the ledges 
of rock at the sides had been worn away by water ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Skinny. “ We talked about it and 
wondered what made it so. There are all kinds of 
canyons there and we found a cave. That was how 
we became acquainted with Alice Laurence. She 
fell over the edge of a canyon and lodged on a bush. 
It was lucky for her that I had my rope along. You 
need a rope when you are out that way.” 

“ Well, Lake Chicago once poured down through 
Desplaines, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers into the 
Gulf of Mexico and, believe me, it was a mighty 
stream. That was another of God’s tools used in 
building the world, or, at least, this part of it.” 

“ It was some hunk of ice, all right, all right, 
that fell off and made the hole under Lake Mich¬ 
igan,” Bill told him, after we had sat quiet a few 
minutes thinking it over. 

“ The creation of Lake Michigan was a different 
story,” said Mr. Norton. “ It was not formed that 
way.” 


82 Around the Campfire 

“ How did they do it? ” 

“ Millions of years ago, ages before the glaciers 
formed and came down, all this land around here 
was under the ocean. After a long time something 
pushed up the bottom of the ocean and dry land 
appeared. Bob’s Hill and Greylock were pushed 
up about the same time.” 

I heard Bill whisper, “ Great snakes! ” but Skinny 
motioned for him to keep still, and Mr. Norton 
went on: 

“ The basins of these Great Lakes were once big 
valleys, with rivers and brooks, little lakes and sur¬ 
rounding hills, but no Boy Scouts. Thousands of 
years passed and all the time the rivers and smaller 
streams were at work scooping out the land and 
making the valley deeper and bigger. Later, the 
glaciers formed, came down and went back, chang¬ 
ing the face of Nature and leaving Long Lake for 
us to enjoy in far-off ages. Lake Chicago poured 
its floods down through the Mississippi River to 
the Gulf of Mexico. Then, in some way the earth’s 
crust pushed up some more and the direction of the 
flow was changed toward the east, down the St. 


Around the Campfire 83 

Lawrence into the Atlantic Ocean. These great 
valleys became permanently filled with water, form¬ 
ing great inland seas of fresh water. Each wave 
that rolled up on the shore carried with it a little 
sand, which dried in the sun and then was blown 
back from the shore line and finally piled up into 
hills of sand. They are called dunes and those be¬ 
tween here and Gary are famous and well worth 
a visit.” 

“ I didn’t know how the earth was made before,” 
said Hank. “ How do they know so much about 
it?” 

“ God wrote it down with His own hand in His 
own book. Everyone does not understand the lan¬ 
guage, but geologists, who have studied it and 
learned how to read it, find the record very plain.” 

“ What is it, Benny ? ” he went on, when he saw 
that Benny was trying to say something. 

" I thought that all God had to do was to say 
4 Let it be so ’ and it was so.” 

“ The story of the creation as told in the Bible,” 
said Mr. Norton, “ does not go into details like 
God’s own record in the rocks. You should under- 


84 Around the Campfire 

stand that God’s days were thousands and millions 
of our years long, every one of them busy with 
the wonderful work of building the earth and the 
stars; then peopling the earth and for all we know 
to the contrary, millions of other worlds. He used 
all kinds of tools in the work—volcanoes, rivers, 
snow and frost and ice, wind, even the humble 
angleworm, and finally when everything was ready 
He set forces in motion that in after ages produced 
the Boys of Bob’s Hill, who are having the time 
of their lives on Long Lake and who ought to be 
going to bed.” 

“ Gee, Pedro,” whispered Skinny, just as I was 
falling asleep. “ How does he know so much ? It 
would make me lopsided to carry all that around.” 


CHAPTER VII 


A MAIDEN IN DISTRESS 


W E were pretty busy after that, at the camp, 
picking huckleberries and having fun, but 
the Fourth of July was mostly fun. We went to the 
mayor’s office in Valparaiso at nine o’clock and he 
told us where to go to get into the parade. We 
marched behind the band, Bill carrying the flag and 
Skinny in front, with his cheeks as red as fire and 
feeling bigger and bigger every time the crowd 
cheered, which was almost all the time. 

We couldn’t understand what ailed Skinny one 
morning soon after the Fourth. All the way to 
the huckleberry marsh he dodged around among the 
bushes and made us walk close behind so as to leave 
only one track. He hadn’t acted that way before 
since coming from Bob’s Hill. 

“Surrounding the enemy, Skinny?” asked Bill. 

He didn’t say a word but dropped flat behind a 
85 


86 A Maiden in Distress 

fence and motioned for us to do the same. As we 
lay there, wondering what it all was about, we 
heard a noise in the distance, coming nearer. 

“ Steady, men,” warned Skinny, aiming his stick 
through the fence and getting ready to shoot. “ Re¬ 
member Bunker Hill and watch for the whites of 
their eyes.” 

Nearer and nearer came the noise, until, with 
a rumble and a roar, the morning car from Val¬ 
paraiso whizzed past. Then we wriggled under the 
bottom wire of the fence and out upon the railroad 
track. 

“ Great snakes, fellows! ” said Bill. “ That was 
a close call.” 

Then we charged down the track after the enemy, 
yelling like Indians, or boys; Pa says there isn’t 
much difference. 

In this way we soon came to the huckleberry 
marsh. As you go toward the marsh along the 
track from the south, Deep Lake is on the left- 
hand side, looking so small that it seems as if you 
could throw a stone across it. You can’t, though, 
for we tried it. On the right-hand side is a road 


A Maiden in Distress 87 

leading up to and through some woods and over to 
Long and Canada Lakes. Beyond, on both sides 
of the railroad, are the huckleberries, with another 
little lake, or pond, at the east end of the marsh. 
At the south edge of the marsh, east of the track 
and part way to the woods, stands a small building, 
called a “ shack/’ where the berry pickers bring their 
berries to be crated. From there the crates are 
loaded on to a car and sent up to the city. 

We went toward the shack the first thing and 
Skinny had run on ahead to let the man know that 
we were on the job. Suddenly, we saw him stop, 
look at something; then beckon to us, excitedly, 
and stand there pointing. 

We went on a run until we could see what he 
was pointing at and all crowded around him, nearly 
as excited as he was. For there on the back of 
the shack, as big as life, drawn on the black tar 
paper with green chalk, was the Sign, which we 
hadn’t seen before since we left home. 

There was a big circle with a bird in the center. 
We couldn’t tell what kind of a bird it was, but 
we knew it was meant for a crow, our patrol 


88 A Maiden in Distress 

animal. Above the crow was the figure 7 and be¬ 
low, 12. 

That is the way we call our meetings at home, 
only we do not always put the same thing in the 
center of the circle. Sometimes it is a crow, some¬ 
times a coffin, and sometimes a tomahawk, accord¬ 
ing to whether we are Boy Scouts, bandits, or In¬ 
dians. The circle means the cave and the figures 
tell the day and hour of the meeting. That Sign 
looked good to us. 

“ Hurrah! ” shouted Benny, so loud that the 
other berry pickers looked around to see what was 
going on. “ It says meet at the cave to-day at 
twelve o’clock.” 

Then he stopped a moment and looked off across 
the marsh toward Bob’s Hill, Peck’s Falls, and our 
cave, almost a thousand miles away. I knew that 
he could see them as he stood there, just as I could 
see them when I shut my eyes and just as I could 
see our house at the foot of Bob’s Hill, with Ma 
at the front door looking up and down the street 
for me. It made me feel sort of choky for a minute 
and all the other boys looked sober. 


A Maiden in Distress 


89 

“ There ain’t any cave, fellers,” he went on. 
“ What good is a place and what good are Signs 
when there ain’t any cave ? ” 

“ I’d give a pail of huckleberries right now to be 
inside our cave at home for five minutes,” said 
Hank. “ It’s the Sign, all right, but how about it, 
Skinny ? What does it mean ? ” 

“ It says, 4 Meet at the cave at twelve o’clock/ 
doesn’t it?” 

We all told him that it did. 

“ Well, that settles it. The Sign never lies. Did 
the Sign ever lie, Pedro? ” 

“ Not so as you could hear it,” I told him. 

“ Then we’ll do it. Meet there. That’s all.” 

“ But where is it, Skinny?” Benny asked. 
“ Where is there any cave ? I’ve been looking for 
a cave ever since we’ve been here and the only thing 
I could find was a woodchuck’s hole.” 

“ Never mind where it is. It’s somewhere, for 
the Sign says so. Leave it to me. Old Long Knife 
will show you the way. I have spoken.” 

“ Now that the speakin’ is over,” said Bill, “ let’s 
go through this berry patch like crows through a 


90 A Maiden in Distress 

grain field. Any kind of an old cave would look 
good to little Willie. Betcher life I’ve spoken, 
too.” 

“ Now, you’ve said something,” we told him. 

I saw the berry man watching us two or three 
times that morning, wondering to see us working 
so fast. 

When we finally left camp to look for the cave 
it was half-past eleven o’clock and we were hungry. 
There wasn’t time to cook dinner and get to the 
cave by noon, so we carried some bacon and other 
things with us. It took longer to start than we 
had counted on, for Skinny was bound that he 
would go back and get his rope. 

“ We may not need it,” he said, “ but you never 
can tell what will happen and we’ll be sure to need 
it if we don’t have it along.” 

We followed the shore of the lake south to the 
wagon road; then went up the road west toward 
Anderson’s. Just before we reached the house, 
Skinny turned north into a field and led us a quarter 
of a mile back through Anderson’s pasture into 
some woods. After a little, we entered a winding 


A Maiden in Distress 


9i 

gully with high sides, pretty to look at and filled 
with trees and underbrush. 

Motioning for us to keep quiet, he crept forward 
until he came almost to the turn in the gully. Then 
he dropped flat and wriggled around the turn, so 
hidden among the bushes and in the grass that I 
could hardly see him myself, although I knew 
where to look. 

In another moment, we heard the call of a crow 
and knew that it was safe to go ahead. We found 
Skinny pointing at the shadow of a dead tree trunk 
which stood there alone, like a ghost soldier, guard¬ 
ing the ravine. 

As soon as we all had gathered around he took 
out his watch and held it in his hand, waiting. 
Looking over his shoulder, I could see that it was 
almost twelve. 

“ It will be noon in two minutes,” I said. 
“ Where is your cave ? The wind in the trees 
sounds like cooking bacon and makes me hun¬ 
gry.” 

Skinny didn’t say a word but stood there look¬ 
ing at his watch, as still as the tree trunk itself. 


A Maiden in Distress 


92 

When both hands pointed exactly at twelve he 
spoke. 

“ The hour has come. Now, fellers, get busy. 
Follow me and mum’s the word! ” 

He walked straight out from the end of the 
shadow ten paces, then turned and stepped thirty- 
five paces at right angles down the ravine, counting 
them aloud as he went. 

We followed after, stepping in his tracks, Indian 
fashion, until at the thirty-fifth step he stopped and 
held up one hand. 

“ S-s-s-t! ” he hissed. “ Is anybody following 
us?” 

We turned and looked. Nothing was there ex¬ 
cept a squirrel scolding us from a hole in a tree. 
When we turned back, Skinny was gone. He had 
disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened 
and swallowed him. 

We didn’t know what to make of it at first; then 
we began to look around. In front of us a tree had 
fallen over from the side of the ravine, the great 
roots forming a tangled mass, from which ferns 
and vines were growing. Peering around the end, 


A Maiden in Distress 


93 

we found an opening leading into a sort of cave, 
and inside was Skinny, laughing at us. 

“ Didn’t I tell you that the Sign never lies? ” he 
exclaimed. “ This isn’t any great shakes of a cave, 
but any port will do in a storm. Now, you know 
how to find it. You always have to look for the 
shadow of a certain tree at noon and take so many 
steps from that. I read it in a book.” 

“ Did the book say anything about eats ? ” asked 
Hank. “ I’ll be gnawing bark in a minute and Mr. 
Anderson might not like to have his trees spoiled.” 

“ We don’t need any book for that,” Bill told 
him. “ A still, small voice in the pit of my stum- 
mick tells me when it is dinner time and betcher 
life I can hear it now.” 

Maybe that you think dinner doesn’t taste good 
out in the woods that way, sitting in front of your 
cave door. We ate until we couldn’t have eaten any 
more if it had been turkey. After that we lay 
around in the grass under the trees, talking about 
Bob’s Hill and the folks at home. 

Then all of a sudden we heard a scream, and it 
was a girl’s voice! 


94 


A Maiden in Distress 


It’s scary to hear somebody yell that way in 
the woods, especially if it’s a girl. We jumped to 
our feet and listened. The scream did not come 
again, but we heard an awful bellowing, from some 
place ahead, out of sight in the winding ravine. 
It made my blood run cold. 

If it hadn’t been for the scream we should have 
run, but that scream was too much for Skinny, who 
always is hoping to rescue some maiden in distress, 
like the knights did in olden times. Every boy 
grabbed the first club he could find and we crept 
quietly down the ravine until we could see around 
the turn into a place where it broadened out. There 
was no one in sight except a big black and white 
monster, which stood at the foot of a tree, 
tearing up the ground with its horns and bel¬ 
lowing. 

“ Anderson’s bull! ” said Skinny in a whisper. 
“ I forgot all about him.” 

We knew all about that Holstein bull and had 
been warned to keep out of his reach. He was 
called “ Calamity ” and was well named, for he 
had nearly killed several people. 


A Maiden in Distress 


95 

“But who screamed?” I said, “and where is 
she ? ” 

Just then, as if in answer to my question, a voice 
came out of the tree. It was a girl’s voice, and 
she yelled for help to beat the band. I’ll bet that 
they heard her in Chesterton. 

“ Fellers,” said Skinny, but low so that the bull 
couldn’t hear him, “ if that isn’t Alice Laurence’s 
voice I’m a Dutchman.” 

“ She’s alive, anyhow,” I told him, “ and that is 
something.” 

We knew that she was all right and so went back 
out of sight, where it was safe, to talk things over. 
The Boy Scouts of Raven Patrol are as brave as 
most folks, but fooling around Calamity Anderson 
when he was mad was a job which we didn’t hanker 
after. Skinny wanted to smoke him out. The 
grass was dry and the wind was blowing toward 
Calamity. It seemed like a good way to do, until 
we happened to think that it would smoke out Alice, 
too. So we had to give that up. 

We had just decided to go for Mr. Anderson 


96 A Maiden in Distress 

when Alice began to yell again. That settled 
Skinny. 

“ We’ve got to do it, fellers,” said he. “ Raven 
Patrol never let a maiden cry in vain. Get your 
clubs ready and we’ll charge down on Calamity, 
yelling like Injuns. Maybe it will scare him.” 

“ And then again,” said Bill, “ maybe it won’t.” 

“ We’ve got to do it, anyhow, or we dassn’t go 
back to Mr. Norton.” 

“ If he doesn’t scare,” whispered Benny to me, 
as we crept around the turn, “ I see the tree that 
I am going to climb.” 

Skinny was scared. I could see that plain enough, 
and so were we all. I saw him wetting his lips 
with his tongue, which he always does when fright¬ 
ened, but he kept on going and in a minute he 
straightened up and shouted: 

“Scouts, to the rescue! Charge!” 

With that, we started, yelling so loud that it 
almost scared me, Bill Wilson making more noise 
than anybody. 

When Calamity heard us, he turned around to see 
what had broken loose and stood there looking at 


A Maiden in Distress 97 

us with bloodshot eyes, bellowing and tearing up 
the ground and trying to make up his mind which 
one to kill first. 

We went as close as we dared and then, when 
he didn’t run, we stopped, not knowing what to 
do next. 

“ Great snakes! ” I heard Bill saying to himself. 
“ I wish I hadn’t come.” 

This was Calamity’s chance. I heard another 
scream from the tree as the bull started for Bill. 

“ Run, Bill, run,” we yelled. 

We didn’t have to tell him that and he didn’t 
wait to hear. He dodged and away he went. 

Just then Calamity caught sight of Skinny, look¬ 
ing pale, he was so scared, and with a rush took 
after him. 

“ Dodge, Skinny,” we shouted. “ He’s coming.” 

Say, Skinny is some dodger, all right. Then 
the bull caught sight of me. I didn’t know what 
happened after that, for I was too busy to look. 
When Benny whispered to me about his tree before 
we charged, I picked one out, too, and I guess all 
the boys did. It was an easy one to climb and 


98 A Maiden in Distress 

the way I went up surprised myself, to say nothing 
about Calamity. As soon as I felt safe, I caught 
hold of a branch and leaned forward to where I 
could see what was going on. 

Calamity stood all alone. There was not a Scout 
in sight. 

“ Caw,” I yelled, “ caw, caw! ” 

From nearly every tree around there I heard 
answering caws and I knew that the Boy Scouts of 
Bob’s Hill were safe. 

“ Are you there, fellers? ” called Skinny, who felt 
better, now that he knew the bull couldn’t get at us. 

“ I am,” said Hank, “ all that is left of me. I 
left some of my legs sticking to the tree on the 
way up.” 

“ The secretary will call the roll.” 

“ Call nothin! ” I told him. “ This isn’t any 
meetin’. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something 
else.” 

I thought I heard some snickering over in the next 
tree, where I knew Alice was. Then she spoke. 

“ Oh, boys,” said she, “ I am so glad that you 
came. I was just on the way over to your camp 


A Maiden in Distress 


99 

to invite you all to our cottage to spend the after¬ 
noon and stay to supper.” 

Then she burst into peals of laughter until I 
was afraid that she would fall out of the tree. 

“ Mamma said for you to come early,” she went 
on, as soon as she could get her breath. “ I think 
we’d better start now.” 

It is bad enough to have Calamity Anderson chase 
you and to tear your trousers climbing a tree, with¬ 
out being laughed at by a girl. It made me sort 
of mad. 

“ I didn’t see anything to laugh at,” I told her. 

“ You didn’t stop to look,” she said, and then 
she laughed again so hard that I had to laugh, too. 

“ You will have to excuse me for smiling,” she 
went on, “ but it was too funny for anything. I 
mean that it is funny now that you are safe; it was 
awful when it was happening. It was real good 
of you to try to save me, anyhow. You made an 
awful racket. It almost scared the bull.” 

“ We have only commenced to fight,” Skinny 
told her, like Paul Jones said to the commander of 
the Serapis that time. “ I’m going to lasso the 


ioo A Maiden in Distress 

critter. That’s what I brought my rope up the tree 
for. You can’t lasso a bull from the ground worth 
a cent. They don’t stand still long enough. I 
lassoed a bear once from a tree. It was great. Say, 
he was mad. I-” 

Just then we heard a man’s voice call, “ Hello, 
over there. What is all that yelling? Is there any 
trouble ? ” 

“ You bet there is,” Skinny shouted back. 
“ There has been a terrible Calamity.” 

“ A what,” said the voice again, as some men 
crashed through the underbrush to the edge of the 
ravine. “ A calamity? Is someone- Oh!” 

“Did he hurt anybody?” he called. 

“ He didn’t,” I told him, “ but it wasn’t his fault; 
he wanted to and he tried hard enough.” 

The men had pitchforks and it didn’t take them 
long to drive the bull away. 

“ It’s a wonder that some of you were not killed,” 
Mr. Anderson told us, after we had climbed down. 
“ That is the fiercest bull that I ever saw. I’ll keep 
him tied up after this as long as you remain in 
camp. It will be easier to tie him than to tie a lot 




A Maiden in Distress ioi 

of boys and I am not going to take any more 
chances.” 

“ We are much obliged to you,” said Skinny, 
“ and it was a good thing for Calamity that you 
came when you did. I was just going to lasso him. 
That’s the way to do it. Climb a tree and lasso 
’em and you always want to carry a rope. Once I 
climbed a tree and lassoed a bear. He didn’t like 
it very well.” 

“ Well, there is no accounting for tastes. Some 
like one thing and some another. Now, you’d 
better clear out while the going is good.” 

“ Listen, boys,” said Alice, after we had reached 
the road. “ That invitation still holds good. We’re 
going to have berries with ice cream on them. It’s 
too bad that Bill doesn’t like ice cream.” 

Bill stood on his hands and kicked both feet in 
the air. 

“ Great snakes! ” said he. “ Berries and ice 
cream! Gee, but I’m glad that I came.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


A FLINT LAKE BEACH PARTY 


W HEN we got to the cottage we found Mrs. 

Laurence looking for us and wondering 
what was keeping Alice so long. She saw us from 
the porch just as we were coming out of the woods, 
and waved a flag. We waved back and broke into 
a run. 

“ I was afraid that something had happened,” 
she said, meeting us part way. “ Alice promised 
to hurry back.” 

“ Didn’t you see us coming on a run?” I told 
her. 

“ How could anything happen, mamma ? ” said 
Alice. “ Skinny was along with his rope.” 

“ There couldn’t possibly,” laughed Mrs. Lau¬ 
rence. “ You always ought to carry a rope.” Then, 
seeing that Skinny was getting fussed, she went on, 
“ I am never afraid of your getting into trouble 
when Captain Miller is along, whether he has a 


102 


A Flint Lake Beach Party 103 

rope or not. I haven’t forgotten when that rope, 
or one like it, saved my little girl from a terrible 
death.” 

Skinny swelled up over that and so did we all, 
because Mrs. Laurence had given us a look which 
showed that she meant all of us. 

“ You bet we’ll take care of Alice,” said he, 
“ every day in the week and every time. That is 
what Boy Scouts are for, to do good deeds and 
rescue maidens in distress.” 

“ Especially maidens ? ” 

“ Well—er—why not? We couldn’t have gone 
away without rescuing Alice from Calamity, could 
we, and be good Scouts, even if we hadn’t known 
her and liked her? ” 

“ And liked her mother,” put in Benny. 

Benny is foxy, all right. She gave him a look 
that I knew was good for an extra dish of ice 
cream. 

“ You haven’t been rescuing Alice again, have 
you? ” she asked, beginning to get scared. 

“ Well, the other fellers did as much as I did,” 
Skinny told her, “ but it was lucky for Calamity 


104 A Flint Lake Beach Party 

that the men came just when they did. I was get¬ 
ting my rope ready.” 

“ Alice Laurence,” said she, turning to Alice, who 
was chewing the corner of her handkerchief to keep 
from laughing, “ tell me what has happened and 
tell me immediately. What is all this about a 
calamity? ” 

So we had to tell her. When we had finished, 
Mrs. Laurence grabbed Alice and hugged her and 
beamed on us boys, until we began to think that 
we had done something great. 

“ I have asked Mr. Norton to come over to sup¬ 
per,” she said, finally. “ I guess home cooking will 
taste good to him after a few days of camp life, 
even if you are Boy Scouts and are supposed to 
know how to boil an egg. Some of the girls who 
are stopping along the shore are coming over this af¬ 
ternoon. We will have all kinds of fun, ending with 
a marshmallow roast on the beach this evening.” 

“ Three caws for Mrs. Laurence,” shouted 
Skinny, and when we had given them until it 
sounded like a flock of crazy crows, he said: 

“ Now, you fellers get busy. If we roast marsh- 


A Flint Lake Beach Party 105 

mallows we’ll need a fire, and it takes wood to make 
a fire.” 

“You will not need much wood; just red-hot 
coals.” 

“ It will be fun to have one, anyhow, and tell 
stories, while it drives the dark away. That is the 
way we do at camp and Mr. Norton tells us a lot 
of things.” 

I don’t believe that we ever had more fun than 
we did that afternoon and evening. First, we went 
into the woods and along the shore, picking up a 
big pile of wood ready for the fire. By that time 
we saw a bunch of girls coming down the beach 
from one of the cottages. It made us feel anxious 
because girls are different from boys and you never 
know what to say to them, or what they will do 
next. 

“ Gee! ” said Skinny, looking at his Scout suit. 
“ They are all dolled up, and gaze on us! ” 

“ You boys are all right in your suits,” Mrs. 
Laurence told him. “ And let me say that you 
know very little about girls if you don’t know that 
they are always attracted to a uniform. If you 


106 A Flint Lake Beach Party 

happen to be inside the uniform, so much the better 
for you. Come in and wash off some of the dirt 
that you accumulated during your little trouble with 
Calamity and you will look well enough.” 

When we went out again with our faces shining 
and our hair combed, the girls were all on the 
front porch. They pretended not to see us when 
we came out and went on talking and pointing out 
on the lake, but they couldn’t help seeing us; we 
knew that. You can’t fool us that way. 

Alice saw us, all right, and came toward us. 

“ Mr. Miller,” said she, “ I want you to meet 
some of my friends. This is-” 

“ Go on, you boob,” I said to Skinny, giving him 
a shove. He was looking around to see who Mr. 
Miller was. 

He turned as red as a beet and looked scared, 
for he wasn’t used to being called mister and 
thought she was speaking to somebody else. 

Then Alice grabbed him by one hand and dragged 
him forward. 

“ Girls,” said she, laughing, “ I made a mistake. 
This isn’t Mr. Miller at all. It is just Skinny. And, 



A Flint Lake Beach Party 107 

say, you ought to see him climb a tree when he is 
in a hurry.” 

We knew from the way the girls laughed 
that Alice had been telling them about Calamity, 
and Skinny knew it, too. He didn’t know what to 
do or say, until one of the girls who was back of 
the others, leaning against the porch railing, called 
out under her breath, as if she didn’t mean for us 
boys to hear: 

“ Oh, Skin-nay, come on over.” 

Skinny heard her and she didn’t have to say it 
twice. 

Then the rest of us were introduced and Alice 
told them again all about Calamity and what had 
happened when we tried to rescue her. 

Late in the afternoon, Mr. Norton came and 
brought our bathing suits; then we had a romp in 
the water. It was great fun. 

“ Now, girls,” said Mrs. Laurence, after we had 
dressed and were feeling fine and cool, “ suppose 
that you help me get supper. We’ll show these Boy 
Scouts a thing or two and I guess that they will 
be glad to eat someone else’s cooking. I’d hate to 


108 A Flint Lake Beach Party 

eat their cooking all the time and I like Boy Scouts, 

too.” 

“ Pedro,” said Skinny to me after they had gone 
into the house, “ it’s a funny thing how much better 
girls are than they used to be when we were young. 
I didn’t like them then. They were always getting 
in the way when a feller wanted to have a good 
time. But, somehow, these girls seem different. 
The more they get in the way, the better you like 
it.” 

Supper was served on the porch, overlooking the 
lake. A cool breeze swept across and stirred the 
water. Voices and laughter floated over from cot¬ 
tages on the other side and boats moved lazily here 
and there, or waited for fishes that didn’t bite. It 
seemed as if the whole world was resting or play¬ 
ing, with nothing to do except to eat and have fun. 

Say, just bread and butter at a time like that, 
when you are hungry and feel good clear through, 
taste better than mince pie and plum pudding on 
Christmas! 

“ Benjamin Wade,” exclaimed Mr. Norton, after 
Mrs. Laurence had heaped up his dish for the third 


A Flint Lake Beach Party 109 

time with ice cream and berries, “ where are you 
going to put it ? ” 

Benny gave a sigh of happiness. “ I guess that 
if you’d been chased by a bull and had been in four 
boat races and a swimming match and other things, 
maybe you’d ’a’ been empty, too.” 

“ Don’t you dare leave a single mouthful, Benny,” 
Mrs. Laurence told him. And he didn’t. 

Flint Lake at night is worth seeing. First, the 
sun sinks down back of the woods, turning the 
water to crimson and gold. Everyone who likes to 
fish gets out his boat and goes floating around in 
the gold, casting for bass. Slowly, it grows darker, 
until the woods are all in the shadow, but still the 
lake reflects back the light and we can see the 
fishermen rowing toward shore, while across the 
water come happy voices and, maybe, the barking of 
a dog. It makes you wish it would stay that way 
always, only you would be mad if it did. 

We lighted the fire when it began to grow dark. 
The pile made a great blaze and the heat drove 
us away at first; but when only red-hot coals were 
left, we gathered around with marshmallows on 


I IO 


A Flint Lake Beach Party 

the ends of pointed sticks and toasted them over 
the coals except when they fell off into the fire 
and burned. 

Afterward we sat around in a circle and told 
the girls all about Bob’s Hill and the twin stones 
and Peck’s Falls and our cave, until it made them 
wish that they were boys, too. Girls can have fun 
sometimes, but it’s great to be a boy in summer, 
with all out of doors to play in. 

The time went so fast that it seemed only a few 
minutes when, after a little whispering together, 
the girls said that they would have to go home. 

“ I declare, it is getting late,” exclaimed Mr. 
Norton, holding his watch close to what was left 
of the fire so that he could see. “ These boys of 
mine will have to turn in pretty soon, too. I’ll 
wait here while you fellows see the girls safe home; 
then we’ll make a beeline for camp. I think that 
before we go we’d better line up and give Mrs. 
Laurence the Scout salute. We certainly have had 
an evening which we shall not soon forget.” 

“ I owe these boys much,” she said, after we had 
saluted. “ They have done for me more than I 


A Flint Lake Beach Party iii 

possibly can do for them. I wondered at first how 
their folks could let them go so far from home. 
Now that I have become acquainted with their 
Scoutmaster, I think I understand.’’ 

“ The secretary will put that in the minutes of 
the meetin’,” cried Skinny, springing to his feet. 
Then he folded his arms like a bandit and stood 
there, while we all waited. 

“ Mr. Norton is great stuff,” said he, “ and so is 
the whole Laurence family. I have spoken.” 

I tell you it surprised the girls some, when Skinny 
said that. 

“ The whole two of us,” said Mrs. Laurence, 
laughing, “ will try to be worthy of such high 
praise.” 

“ Wait a minute before you go,” said Alice, when 
we were getting ready to start. “ Will you do 
something for me, Bill? ” 

“ Betcher life I will.” 

“ I want the girls to hear you holler. You are 
the awfullest yeller that I ever heard.” 

“ Oh, say, Alice! I don’t want to do that,” he 
said, bashful-like. “ Cut it out, can’t you? ” 


112 A Flint Lake Beach Party 

“ Please do,” the girls all teased. “ We never 
heard you.” 

“ Go ahead, Bill,” Skinny told him. “ Yell for 
the ladies. We can stand it.” 

“ Well,” said Bill, “ I don’t feel much like it, but 
I’ll do my best.” 

Bill’s best is a lot. He stood on his hands before 
the fire and when he had balanced himself and 
taken some deep breaths, began. 

Say, it was awful, and I’d heard Bill many times 
before. It sounded as if somebody was getting 
killed. Mrs. Laurence clapped her hands to her 
ears and all up and down the lake we could hear 
folks running out of their cottages to find out what 
the matter was. It made us all feel proud. Bill 
yelled so hard that he almost fell into the fire; then 
he picked himself up and stood there with folded 
arms, looking around, like Skinny did. 

“ I have spoken,” said he. 

We started down the shore with the girls toward 
the other cottages, laughing and talking, making 
fun of Bill, and planning some more beach parties. 
Then, just as we were passing through a lonely 


A Flint Lake Beach Party 113 

spot, we heard a pistol shot farther down the shore 
and the noise of somebody running. They were 
coming our way. 

It was scary that time of night, not knowing 
what it was about. We didn’t like to go on and 
were ashamed to turn back, when the girls were 
with us. They were scared, too. All the time 
we could hear the footsteps of the running men 
coming nearer. 

We waited a minute and then, when we saw them 
coming out of the dark, two of them on a jump, 
without a word, girls and all, we turned and broke 
for the bushes. 

“ Halt! ” cried one of the men, and as he spoke 
he fired a revolver. “ Halt, or I’ll shoot.” 

“ Great snakes! ” whispered Bill to himself. “ I 
wish I hadn’t come.” 

“ Quick! Lie down behind us,” said Skinny to 
the girls. “ Now, fellers, line up and show ’em 
what Scouts are made of. When I say ‘ Charge! * 
give ’em Bunker Hill.” 

I could see him wetting his lips with his tongue, 
but he stood there, just the same, and faced them. 


114 A Flint Lake Beach Party 

It made us all feel brave and we lined up by his 
side and faced them, ready to charge. 

“ Shucks! It’s nothin’ but a passel of boys,” 
said one of the men, when he had come closer. 
“And girls,” he added, catching sight of the 
dresses. 

“ What are you doing here ? ” he asked. 

“ We’re taking these girls home. We’ve had a 
party,” Skinny told him. 

“ There is somebody being murdered up there,” 
said he, pointing down the beach in the direction 
we had come from. “ Do you know anything about 
it? Didn’t you hear the yelling? ” 

“ Fellers,” said Skinny, turning to us, “ did you 
hear anybody holler ? ” 

“ I thought I heard something,” said Bill, “ but 
I didn’t see anybody doing it.” 

Then we hurried on; but the man looked after 
us and shook his head, as if he didn’t quite under¬ 
stand it. 

“ Times have changed, Lew,” said he, “ since we 
were kids.” 


CHAPTER IX 


FISHING FOR BASS 

“ | ) OYS,” said Mr. Norton, one morning when 
1 3 we were eating breakfast, “ do you re¬ 
member the queer-shaped lake which you discovered 
back there in the woods? ” 

“ Do you mean the one that looks like a pair 
of spectacles ? ” I asked. 

“ That’s the one, or the two, according to how 
you look at the matter. It is called Spectacle Lake 
on account of its shape.” 

“ I know the place,” Skinny told him. “ Bill and 
I were up there day before yesterday. The fish 
were jumping all around, but they won’t let us 
catch them. Somebody owns it. Whoever heard 
of a lake belonging to anybody?” 

“ Well, I have some news. I met the owner yes¬ 
terday and he proved to be a very fine man. Any¬ 
how, he told me that we might have a day of fishing 
115 


116 Fishing for Bass 

in the lake any time we wanted to, if we would 
be good. How would you like to go to¬ 
day ?” 

That sounded good to us and he knew it from 
the noise we made. 

“ We’ve got some huckleberry customers,” I told 
him. “ Who will look after them ? ” 

“ Get right after the berries the first thing this 
morning, and we will fish this afternoon and even¬ 
ing. I am going to have a try at the black bass 
and this time of the year they bite better in the 
cool of the morning or evening.” 

“ We caught a four-pound bass once in Illinois 
River,” said Benny. “ It was fun.” 

“ They are a fine fish and full of fight. I don’t 
believe there is a gamier fish anywhere than the 
black bass and they grow as large as seven pounds 
sometimes. There was a seven-pound bass caught 
in Flint Lake earlier in the season, but I haven’t 
had any luck so far, although I have not had much 
time to fish until now.” 

When we all met again at dinner time, Mr. Nor¬ 
ton, who had been down to the city, brought with 


Fishing for Bass 117 

him a queer-looking bundle and wouldn’t tell us 
what it was. 

“ You’ll see when the time comes,” said he. 

About two o’clock we rowed our boats up to 
Lake View and left them. Then, carrying a lunch 
basket and fishing tackle, we went up the bluff and 
through the woods. 

There is quite a high bluff overlooking Long 
Lake on the west, near the south end. The top is 
so high above the water that you wouldn’t expect 
to find another lake anywhere around. Just the 
same, if you go back through the woods toward 
the southwest and across a pasture, after a while 
you will come to the highest spot around there. 
From there the ground slopes down to the queerest 
little lake that you ever saw. 

It is really two lakes, twins, both small and con¬ 
nected by a curved channel. The two lakes are the 
eyes of the spectacles and the channel is the part 
that rests on the nose. Growing entirely around 
the lakes to a distance of ten to fifteen feet from 
the shore was a weed with big leaves, which Mr. 
Norton called spatterdock. 


118 Fishing for Bass 

“ Do you see those weeds?” he asked, pointing 
them out. 

We told him that we thought they spoiled the 
lake. 

“ They do, do they ? ” said he. “ That depends 
on what use you want to make of the lake. A 
growth of spatterdock like that is an ideal feeding 
place for bass and a little later in the day T11 try 
to land a few. Meanwhile, you boys can get busy 
and have all the fun you want to with your still¬ 
fishing. I’ll lie around in the shade and watch 
you.” 

We found a couple of old boats drawn up on 
the shore among the weeds and it didn’t take us 
long to push out and throw in our hooks, baited 
with angleworms. 

There is something about fishing that makes a 
boy feel good all over. Perhaps a part of it comes 
from being out of doors, with woods nearby and 
lake or river sparkling in the sunshine and reflect¬ 
ing back trees and bushes and every reed along the 
shore. All kinds of birds fly around in the air 
above you, chasing insects and, maybe, wondering 





It Didn’t Take Us Long to Rush Out and Throw in Our Hooks 











Fishing for Bass 119 

what kind of big insect you are. sitting there so 
still by the water. A gentle breeze fans you and 
brings with it the smell of woods and of meadow 
flowers, growing grass, and weeds. School seems 
a long way off and there is no work to be done, 
like filling woodboxes and things like that, except 
work that is fun. 

You sit there in the boat or along the shore, soak¬ 
ing in the sunshine and wildness and beauty of it 
all and you think that this time, sure, you are going 
to catch the grandfather of all the fishes. Suddenly, 
comes a tug at your fish line. Gee, it sends a funny 
feeling all through you and sets every drop of 
blood in your body to dancing and you suddenly 
stiffen all over with the excitement of it. 

Then comes another tug and another. Three 
nibbles make a bite, and you pull in. “ Gee whizz! ” 
you think, “ here comes a whale. When it comes 
to fishing I’m the Willie-boy.” Then a little sun- 
fish sails through the air over your head and falls 
flopping in the grass at your feet. It’s all right, 
anyhow. Maybe you will get the big one next 
time. Then you do it all over again. 


120 Fishing for Bass 

For more than an hour we pulled in the little 
golden fellows, until we had enough for supper 
and then some, and were ready to go in to shore 
for a time. 

We found Mr. Norton undoing the package 
which we had asked him about and stopped to 
watch him. He took out several torches like 
those *^ey carry in torchlight processions and 
stuck them in the ground at the edge of the 
water. 

“ We’ll have some fun to-night,” he said. “ We 
can cook our fish and eat supper here and then go 
after bullheads. These torches when lighted at 
night will attract bullheads and they will bite like 
sixty. 

“ The bullhead is a good fish to eat,” he went on, 
“ almost as delicious as brook trout, caught in the 
mountain streams at home, and it doesn’t seem to 
have as many bones as other fish. There is more 
fun catching trout, though, for the bullhead does 
not put up much of a fight when hooked. It is a 
lazy fish, burrowing in the mud at the bottom of the 
lake. 


Fishing for Bass 121 

“ Can any of you tell me how it differs from 
other fish? What do you say, Skinny?” 

“ They haven’t any scales, for one thing.” 

“ That is right. Most fish have scales, but the 
bullhead has not, and must be skinned before eaten. 
He is a sort of cousin to the catfish, which is found 
in the Mississippi River and some of its tributaries, 
and sometimes weighs as much as one hundred 
pounds. The bullhead is one of the hardiest fish 
known.” 

“ They can sting you, too,” Bill told him. “ One 
stung me once when I was taking him off the hook. 
Gee, it hurt.” 

“ Yes, its fins are very sharp and there is 
a needle-like projection on each side of its 
mouth.” 

“ Say, Mr. Norton,” Benny asked; “ does it hurt 
the fish any to catch them ? ” 

“ I do not imagine that they exactly enjoy it, 
especially when they swallow the bait and the bull¬ 
head nearly always does that, but there are no nerves 
in a fish’s mouth and he probably feels no pain. 
That is why a game fish, like a trout, bass, or 


122 Fishing for Bass 

pickerel, is able to fight so hard. If it hurt him, 
he couldn’t do it.” 

“ Tell us some more about fish,” said Hank, after 
Mr. Norton had finished fixing his torches and put¬ 
ting out some throw lines. 

“ Wait until we have cooked these fellows and 
had supper. I am hungry and it is barely possible 
that you boys feel the same. How about it, 
Skinny?” 

But Skinny was too busy to answer. He was 
building a fire. 

“ Now, I’ll tell you all I know,” said Mr. Norton, 
after we had eaten supper, “ and it will not take me 
long, for like most people, I know very little about 
the subject-” 

“ Wait,” called out Skinny, before he could go 
on. “ Pedro, you put this in the minutes of the 
meeting. It’s important, and can’t you draw a map 
of the lakes and put it in, too? ” 

“ I don’t know,” I told him, “ I ain’t much on 
the draw.” 

“ Yes, you are, too. You drew a good picture of 
the places around Bob’s Hill and Peck’s Falls. 



A rule 


Fishing for Bass 


123 


* 
























124 Fishing for Bass 

Everybody that wants Pedro to draw a picture and 
put it in the minutes of the meeting,” he said, 
pounding on a stone with the head of his hatchet, 
“ say aye.” 

“ You’re scaring all the fish,” Bill grumbled, when 
the boys said aye, loud enough to be heard in 
Chesterton. 

That settled it. I had to draw the map. It 
doesn’t look just right, somehow, but it will sort 
of show where the different places are. 

“ Mr. Chairman, is it safe to go on now? ” asked 
Mr. Norton. 

“ It is,” said he, “ I have spoken.” 

“ I don’t suppose that one person out of fifty of 
the men and boys who go fishing have any knowl¬ 
edge of the habits of the fish they angle for, their 
sense of hearing, of seeing or smelling, the way 
they live, their choice of foods, or their likes and 
dislikes generally. It takes a great deal of study to 
learn all about those things, but I imagine that to 
be a real successful fisherman one must have that 
knowledge. You will find it the same in business, 
when you grow older. Business is very much like 


Fishing for Bass 125 

fishing. You must have the right bait and throw 
it where the customers are and in the right way, 
or the other fellow will pull them in.” 

“ I didn’t know that fish could smell,” said Benny. 

“ Yes, their sense of taste is very limited but that 
of smell is very keen. Some odors attract them 
and some repel. They will pay no attention to bait 
that is spoiled and does not smell right. They can 
hear, too, and they not only can hear sounds but 
in some way they seem to feel them. On that ac¬ 
count you should be very quiet when fishing and 
drop your bait into the water with as little noise 
as possible and Bill should refrain from giving any 
of his justly celebrated yells.” 

“ How about seeing? ” 

“ They can see, all right,” said Skinny. “ You 
don’t ever want to wear a straw hat when you are 
fishing.” 

“ Yes, they can see. Their sense of sight is very 
acute, but their eyes are so fixed at the top of their 
heads that they cannot see much below them. They 
readily can see out of the water above them and, 
if the water is clear, from fifty to sixty feet on 


126 Fishing for Bass 

each side. For that reason they quickly detect un¬ 
natural bait. Most of them live on smaller fish, 
insects, and the like, and in game fishing you must 
make your bait look very lifelike or they will not 
touch it. In casting, one should keep out of sight 
as much as possible and sit with the sun facing 
him, so that no shadow will fall in the water. 

“ When I get through answering your questions 
I am going to leave you boys here on the shore, 
except one to row the boat, and will try my luck at 
casting. There is real sport in casting. Of course, 
still-fishing is fun, too, especially for boys, but it 
doesn’t give the fish any show for his money, 
so to speak. He doesn’t have a chance. He bites 
the hook and you pull him out. That is all there 
is to it. But in casting, you put your skill and 
cunning against those of the fish and, if you are 
not very careful, he will get away. The real sport 
comes after you have hooked your fish.” 

“ How are you going to get your minnows? ” 

“ I am going to use what is called an artificial 
minnow. Here it is. It is made of wood and when 
pulled through the water in a certain way looks 


Fishing for Bass 127 

enough like a live minnow to deceive a hungry bass. 
You see there are hooks on the sides and hooks 
behind. The tail hooks usually are all that are 
necessary. In feeding, a bass grabs a minnow 
from below and by the tail, so that the minnow 
will not see him coming. Then, as quick as light¬ 
ning, he turns him around in his mouth and swal¬ 
lows him head first.” 

“ What is that for?” asked Dick. “ Why does 
he turn him around ? ” 

“ Because he cannot swallow him tail first. The 
fins would catch and keep the fish from going down. 
Big fish prefer solitude and usually will be found 
in the cooler and deeper parts of the lake. In cast¬ 
ing, drop your bait into the deeper places and those 
which are the very hardest to get at. Early in the 
morning, or in the evening, or even at night, is the 
best time. 

“ The cloudier it is, the better, and this is espe¬ 
cially true just before a storm, when a slight breeze 
is stirring the surface of the water. The fish seem 
unusually active then. But do not fish after a 
storm, as the rain always washes a quantity of food 


128 Fishing for Bass 

into the water, which the fish will prefer to your 
bait. 

“ Casting is an art. It looks easy, but to place 
your minnow within a few inches of the spatter- 
dock, without having the hooks catch in the weeds 
and without making too big a splash, is quite an 
accomplishment. If you do it just right and a fish 
is attracted by the bait, he will strike from below 
and behind and then will try to turn the bait in 
his mouth. To his surprise he will find that he is 
hooked. First he will tug and tug, trying to get 
loose; then he will make for deep water, only to 
return to the surface, from which he will jump into 
the air and shake the minnow in much the same 
way as a terrier shakes a rat. 

“ The best way to land a bass, I have found, is 
to allow him plenty of line and keep it tight all 
the time. Gradually the fish will tire and finally 
drown, or nearly drown, so that in lifting him out 
of the water there will be less danger of losing him.” 

“ You didn’t mean drown, did you? Fish can’t 
drown.” 

“ Surely a fish can drown. It has to have air 


Fishing for Bass 129 

just as we do, but breathes it in a different way, 
taking it out of the water. Fly-casting is the most 
difficult of all. This consists of trailing along the 
surface of the water flies, grasshoppers, or other 
choice morsels in a way to make the fish think they 
are alive. When the fly looks good to Mr. Fish he 
darts up, grabs it, and rushes away with great 
rapidity. Then is when you want to look out for 
your line. The fun is all in landing him, for as 
the trout feels no pain in his mouth, he is free to 
use his strength and his breathing facilities in a 
fight to get free and, let me tell you, he is some 
fighter. It takes great skill properly to cast your 
bait into the water, trail it in a life-like manner, 
and then to land your fish. 

“ The Chinese have a way of snagging fish that 
could be used successfully in these lakes, only it 
would be against the law. They cut a stout cord 
into lengths, depending upon the depth of the 
water. On these pieces of cord they tie hooks at 
regular distances and suspend the cords from a 
wire, or rope, in the stream. In swimming around 
the fish get snagged or hooked and the more they 


130 Fishing for Bass 

fight to get loose the more securely they are fas¬ 
tened. When I was a boy we used to catch bass 
in a way that is not allowed now by law. We took 
large bottles, corked them tight, and let them float 
on the water, each one carrying a fish line, baited 
with a live frog. We caught a lot of them that 
way. 

“ Now you know all about it,” he went on, after 
a moment, “ and I am not going to answer another 
question. Come on, Skinny, you are patrol leader. 
The boys will let you go first. Let’s show them 
that we are real fishermen.” 

“ I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said he, after he had 
pushed out beyond the weeds. “ Just to show you 
that I am a good Scout, I’ll let you catch the first 
fish, if you can. I will show you how to cast; then 
you can go after the big fellows.” 

Skinny practiced a few minutes, throwing out 
the bait and reeling it in, just like Mr. Norton told 
him, but without getting any bites. Then they 
moved the boat over into the other lake and stopped 
quietly about twenty feet from the edge of the spat- 
terdock. 


Fishing for Bass 131 

“ Now go to it.” 

Skinny ran his tongue out to make sure of a good 
one and gave his pole a little flirt. 

“ Too far,” groaned Bill. 

It did seem that way, for the wooden minnow 
fell on a dock leaf, rested there a moment, then 
dropped off into the water with a gentle splash 
as if a small fish had jumped into the air and dropped 
back again. Then I hear Skinny say, “ Gee-whili- 
kins! ” and the reel fairly sang as it whizzed around, 
letting out the line. 

Splash went the water, twenty feet or more 
away, as a big fish leaped into the air, shaking at 
the bait to beat the band, and fell back. 

“ Great snakes! ” shouted Bill. “ Hold on to 
him, Skinny. You’ve got a whale.” 

“ Steady,” Mr. Norton was saying, nearly as ex¬ 
cited as we were. “ Reel him in. Whoa-up. If 
you let him get in among the docks, it is good 
night.” 

Finally we saw him reach down suddenly into 
the water and in another moment held up a whop¬ 
ping big black bass for us to see. 


132 Fishing for Bass 

“ Three pounds and a half if he weighs an 
ounce!” he exclaimed. “Good boy. Now give 
your Uncle Dudley a chance.” 

Say, it was great fun. Mr. Norton caught two 
or three; then he let the rest of us try and we 
caught several more, but none as large as Skinny's. 
After dark we lighted the torches and caught bull¬ 
heads until we were tired, but it seemed tame after 
the bass. 

“ That will do for one day,” said Mr. Norton, 
finally. “If the owner turns us loose here very 
often he will have to restock his lakes. As it is, 
we have had some mighty good sport. We’ll have 
a fine breakfast in the morning and there will be 
enough fish for your friends, the Laurences.” 


CHAPTER X 


AMONG THE SAND DUNES 


O NE of the best places for having fun which 
we found, except on the lakes, of course, 
was a place on the edge of some woods, called 
Mineral Springs. It is a little north of Wahob 
Lake. Under a big tree, there is one spot where 
the water fairly boils out of the ground and then 
runs off through the fields and woods in quite a 
big stream. 

That spring broke out all of a sudden, someone 
told us. When it happened, it sent the dirt high 
up in the air and made a great roar. A farmer 
was plowing in a field nearby and it scared him 
half to death. The water is cold, even on hot 
summer days, and has a taste like iron, but is good 
to drink, just the same. 

We often played our Scout games around there 

and sent up smoke signals from “ Mount Moriah.” 
133 


134 Among the Sand Dunes 

Mt. Moriah isn’t a mountain at all; it is only a 
little hill. We wouldn’t look twice at it if Greylock 
Mountain was anywhere near, or Bob’s Hill, either. 
But Greylock and Bob’s Hill were a long way off, 
so Mt. Moriah looked good to us. From the top 
of it we could see all around except where trees hid 
the view. 

Bill, Benny, and I were on top of the hill, one day, 
looking off toward the north and wishing that we 
could see Bob’s Hill over there somewhere. In¬ 
stead of that, we could see a lot of hills, which are 
called sand dunes, looking almost like a low range 
of mountains. Some of them have names like 
mountains. Their sandy tops and sides glistened in 
the sun and we played that they were snow-capped 
peaks. 

“ Great snakes! ” said Bill. “ Those dunes look 
good to me. Let’s go over there and explore. I 
don’t believe it is so very far. We’ll play that we 
are Christopher Columbus, or some guy like 
that.” 

“ Let’s not go now,” I told him. “ It’s too near 
dinner time. I can tell by the feeling. Besides, the 


Among the Sand Dunes 135 

other boys will want to go, too, and, maybe, Mr. 
Norton.” 

Just then we turned around and looked toward 
our camp, which was hidden among the trees south 
of us. A column of smoke was going up out of 
the woods. 

“ Injuns! ” yelled Benny. “ Come on. Let’s sur¬ 
round them.” 

Before we could start the column broke into long 
and short puffs of smoke, and we knew that it was 
the other boys at the camp signaling to us. 

Signaling that way is great fun when you know 
how and every Boy Scout has to know how. The 
Morse alphabet is used, the same that is used in 
telegraphing. We signal with flags, too, sometimes, 
but we like smoke signals better because we can see 
them so far off. Once, at home, when Bill was up 
on Greylock with a sprained ankle and no one 
knew where he was except himself, and he didn’t 
know whether he ever could get down or not, he 
signaled for help and we saw the smoke, away 
down in the valley, and could tell what he said. 

The Morse letters are made by dots and dashes, 


136 Among the Sand Dunes 

or by sounds which the telegraph instrument makes 
that mean dots and dashes. Instead of sounds, 
we use puffs of smoke, a long one for a dash and 
a short one for a dot. The Boy Scouts’ Manual 
tells how to do it. First you make a fire that 
smokes like sixty; then have a boy take hold of 
each end of the blanket and hold it over the fire 
for a moment. When you take the blanket away, 
the smoke will go up in a puff. You can make the 
puffs long or short, as you like. 

We couldn’t tell at first what the boys were trying 
to say, but pretty soon the smoke grew thicker and 
we began to spell out the letters. First there was 
one short puff all alone. 

“ E,” said Bill. 

Then came a short puff, followed by a long one. 

“ A,” shouted Benny. 

Pretty soon we saw a long puff go up all alone, 
which meant T. 

“ Eat,” we all said together. We thought that 
was all of it and that when the smoke started again, 
it would repeat the same word. Sure enough, a 
short puff went up. In a moment, however, there 


Among the Sand Dunes 137 

was another puff and then a third. Then we knew 
the full word and the message. 

E 

. - A 
T 

. . . S 

“ I guess that is the dinner bell,” said Bill. “ I 
can ’most smell the bacon frying.” 

We didn’t have anything to build a fire with, so* 
we couldn’t signal back, and we didn’t want to take 
the time. They couldn’t have seen the smoke, any¬ 
how, from where they were. We hurried back 
and in a little while reached camp. 

Mr. Norton was eating when we marched up 
with Bill at the head. 

“ Boys,” said he, “ I have been called away again 
and wanted you here before leaving. Is there any 
reason why I should not go ? ” 

“ There is,” said Skinny. 

“ Well, let’s hear the reason.” 

“ You promised to go fishing with us.” 

‘‘If that is all, I think that I’ll have to leave. 


138 Among the Sand Dunes 

The fishing will keep and my appointment will not. 
I may be able to get back on a late train. What are 
your plans for this afternoon? ” 

" Bill and I want to walk over to the sand dunes,” 
I told him, “ if the rest of the boys will go.” 

“ I have wanted to go with you on that trip. 
Still, you can go again; they are worth seeing twice. 
I imagine that those sand dunes are unlike any¬ 
thing else in America. People who are experts in 
botany, so I have been told, find them a rich field 
for exploration. They have found nearly every¬ 
thing in the way of plant life there from the orchid 
to the cactus. You’d better take a car to Chesterton 
and walk from there. It is farther over to the 
dunes than it seems. Look up a time-table, so that 
you can take a train back from Dune Park to Ches¬ 
terton in case you should be too tired to walk.” 

Some people go crazy over the sand dunes, as 
Mr. Norton said, but we didn’t. We had a lot of 
fun, though, and some things that were a long way 
from fun. Say! No more sand dunes for us. 

Wild! We thought it was wild among the moun¬ 
tains at the east end of Hoosac Tunnel, and so it 


Among the Sand Dunes 139 

was, but in a different way. There, it was mostly 
rocks and trees. Here, it was all sand, even where 
trees were growing. We couldn’t understand what 
made them grow in such a place. We came upon 
valleys, between the hills, where there wasn’t a tree 
of any kind, or a blade of grass, even; nothing but 
sand, swept by the wind and packed down in little 
scallops, like ripples on the water. 

We met a man on the way who told us all about 
them. He said that once, not long ago, criminals 
from Chicago, when the police got after them, 
would chase out into the sand dunes and hide and 
it was almost impossible to find them. That was 
before the city of Gary was built in one of the 
wildest parts. Right under where one of the big 
mills in Gary now stands, he told us, there used to 
be a cave, and some real bandits were caught 
there by the police. It made us feel scary. We 
found a lot of tracks,; some so big that they looked 
as if a herd of elephants might have gone through 
there. 

“ Bears,” shouted Skinny. “ It’s lucky that I 
brought my rope along.” 


140 Among the Sand Dunes 

We followed the bear tracks until we happened 
to look at our own tracks on the side hills and 
found that they looked about the same. The sand 
was soft and loose and rolled down, almost filling 
our tracks, giving them a queer look. 

“ Bears, nothin’! ” said Bill. “ It’s Injuns. I 
’most know it is. Let’s climb that big hill over there 
and maybe we can see their smoke.” 

“ I think they are bandits,” said Benny, looking 
around as if he was afraid they might be back 
of him. “ Not bandits like us, but the real 
thing. There is probably a cave somewhere 
around here, where they hide, just like the man 
said.” 

You couldn’t blame him any for feeling that way, 
for it was scary to see the tracks there, where it 
looked as if there would not be people within a 
thousand miles. 

When Benny said that, it made us all nervous 
except Bill. He didn’t seem to think what it would 
be to meet bandits in a place like that. Before we 
could stop him, he opened his mouth and gave a 
terrible yell. 


Among the Sand Dunes 141 

At the first sound every one of us made for a 
clump of trees, Bill chasing after. 

“ Now you’ve gone and done it,” Skinny told 
him. “ They’ll know just where to look for us.” 

“ But they won’t know what it is,” I said. 
" Bill’s holler don’t sound like anything anybody 
ever heard before.” 

“ Well, if they catch me,” said Bill, “ they’ll have 
to go some.” 

With that he started for the hill on a run, we 
after him. But there was no running up the hill. 
It was all fine sand, without a stick or stone or 
bush. It was one of the snow-capped mountains 
that we saw from Mt. Moriah, only now it looked 
like a hill of brown sugar. At every step we sank 
in the sugar to our shoe tops and the sugar from 
above would slide down toward us. 

Climbing was hard work and it seemed as if the 
whole hill would slide down on us, but, after a time, 
we scrambled over a sharp edge of sand which the 
wind had made at the top. Then we forgot all 
about bandits and Indians and everything else ex¬ 
cept what we saw, for there in front of us, stretch- 


142 Among the Sand Dunes 

ing north as far as we could see, like a great ocean, 
was Lake Michigan. Away in the distance, so far 
that it was out of sight behind the curve of the 
earth, we knew that there must be a steamboat, for 
we could see its smoke seeming to come out of the 
water. 

I saw the ocean once at Nantasket Beach, near 
Boston, and it wasn’t so very different except that 
the waves which rolled in and broke on the 
beach were higher and the air had a smell of 
salt. 

When we saw it, we started for the shore on 
a run. It was great, playing around there, with 
gulls soaring overhead, sandpipers running along 
the beach, waves rolling in and breaking, with a soft 
roaring, and no sign that anybody ever had been 
there before. 

“ I’ll be the first one in swimming,” shouted 
Benny, making a grab at his clothes. 

He was, too, but the rest of us were not far 
behind and soon were out in the cool water, splash¬ 
ing around like so many fish. Then, just as we 
were having the most fun of all, playing that we 


Among the Sand Dunes 143 

were saving one of the boys from drowning, we 
heard some guns, sounding like a battle. 

“ Gee, fellers! ” said Skinny, treading water. 
“ Did you hear it ? I’ll bet that was Benny’s ban¬ 
dits.” 

“ Or Injuns,” said Bill, spouting water like a 
whale. He was swimming for shore so fast that 
he swallowed a part of the lake. 

It was a race to see who would get out first, and 
Bill beat, but we all struck the beach at about the 
same time. Then came some more yells, sounding 
nearer, and a lot of shooting. 

That was enough for us. We grabbed our 
clothes and made a run for the sand hills. We 
didn’t stop until we were out of sight from the lake 
and wouldn’t have stopped then if we hadn’t been 
out of breath. Then we dressed and tried to decide 
what to do. The shooting had stopped and some¬ 
how we were not so scared with our clothes on. 
Some of the boys wanted to go home, but Skinny 
said that he didn’t believe in running from the 
enemy. 

“ Either it is something, or it isn’t,” he told us. 


144 Among the Sand Dunes 

He waited a moment, but nobody said anything. 
There wasn’t anything to say. Then he went on: 

“If it isn’t anything it won’t hurt us any; will 
it? And if it is something, a fight or something 
like that, why, we’re Boy Scouts, ain’t we? And 
betcher life Boy Scouts don’t do much running. 
That’s all I’ve got to say, except that Gabe Miller 
has got his rope and he’s got his gang, and, Injun 
or no Injun and bandit or no bandit, he’s going to 
the rescue. Say, they’ll know who’s around before 
we get through with them and don’t you forget it.” 

“ That’s the stuff! ” cried Bill. “ We can creep 
up behind them through the woods; then charge 
down on ’em from the hills.” 

“ ’Tention, Scouts! ” yelled Skinny. “ Every¬ 
body get a club. Forward, and mum’s the word! ” 

With Skinny leading the way, carrying his rope 
and swinging his hatchet, Bill close behind, going 
through all the motions of yelling but making no 
sound, and the others scattered along, we started 
across the dunes toward the place where we had 
heard the shooting. 

It was great fun, up hill and down, through 


Among the Sand Dunes 145 

clumps of stunted trees and underbrush, plowing 
through sand, climbing great heaps of brown sugar, 
crossing wind-swept plains, as bare of trees and 
grass and stones as the desert the school reader tells 
about. 

We almost forgot about the bandits and played 
that we were explorers. Harry wanted to play 
Columbus and discover America, but we told him 
that Columbus didn’t discover any desert. He 
landed on a tropical island, one of the West Indies. 

“San Salvador/’ said Skinny; “I read it in a 
book.” 

Benny wanted to be Baiboa and discover the 
Pacific Ocean, but Bill told him that Balboa had 
his dog along and that we were all out of dogs. 

“ I read it in a book,” said he, winking at me. 

Hank wanted to be an Arab and speed over the 
trackless desert on his trusty camel, but nobody 
would be the camel. 

“ Let’s be What’s-his-name,” I said, “ the guy 
who explored Mexico and conquered the Aztec In¬ 
dians. It will be more fun than enlisting.” 

“Who was it?” Benny asked. “It’s so long 


146 Among the Sand Dunes 

since I went to school that I’ve forgotten his 

name.” 

Just then the name came to me. “ Cortez,” I 
told him, “ Hernando Cortez.” 

All this time we had been climbing through the 
sand. Skinny was just saying, “We take posses¬ 
sion of this country in the name of the king of 
Spain,” when we heard some awful yells and this 
time they came from the other side of the hill 
which we were climbing. 

“ Great snakes! ” whispered Bill. “ I wish I 
hadn’t come.” 

We all turned to run and did run to the bottom 
of the hill. Then we stopped; Skinny began to 
loosen his rope, and I knew that he was thinking 
about the Boy Scout business. Then he waved his 
hatchet and beckoned us forward. Back up the 
hill we climbed but we were careful not to speak. 
In the soft sand our footsteps made no sound. 

When Skinny was almost at the top, he threw 
himself on his face and began to wriggle upward, 
motioning for us to do the same. Silently, like 
snakes, we slowly made our way to the top and 


Among the Sand Dunes 147 

over the ridge of sand, which the wind had formed 
there, and so out upon the narrow summit, from 
which we all knew that we would be able to see 
the valley on the other side. 

Skinny was the first over. As he looked, I saw 
him give one backward spring, fall, and then go 
rolling down the hill of sand. Then, as we looked 
over the edge, there came a terrible roar that seemed 
to make the sand hill tremble and an answering 
roar from a little beyond. 

I could feel the blood leave my face and my 
breath came in gasps. You needn’t believe me if 
you don’t want to, but it is true, just the same. 
There in a little valley, surrounded by sand hills, 
were two lions, fighting with a wild man! During 
the second in which we looked, we saw it all and 
never will be able to forget it,—the great lions, 
crouching for a spring, and the wild man, dressed 
in skins, with hair all over his face and hanging 
down his back, uttering strange cries. 


CHAPTER XI 


SOME ASTONISHING ADVENTURES 
HE Boy Scouts of Raven Patrol don’t scare 



easily, but when you see lions roaring 
around where there oughtn’t to be anything bigger 
than rabbits, it is time to be scared and it is time 
to run, Boy Scouts or no Boy Scouts. We didn’t 
stop to see any more. In another second we all 
were rolling and tumbling and panting down the 
hill after Skinny; then were off at full speed across 
the dunes, and all the time those awful roars were 
sounding in our ears and we were expecting every 
minute to be grabbed by a lion from behind. 

Nobody said a word. There wasn’t time and we 
didn’t have any breath to spare, for running 
through the sand was hard work. We didn’t know 
where we were going and we didn’t care. All we 
wanted was to get as far away from the roars as 
we could and as soon as we could. Bill Wilson, 


Some Astonishing Adventures 149 

who is the best runner, was ahead and Benny 
Wade, whose legs are shorter than ours because 
he isn’t as old, was getting farther and farther 
behind. 

“ I’m all in, boys,” he panted, finally. “ I can’t 
go much farther. Save yourselves and tell 
mother-” 

We never knew what he wanted us to tell his 
mother because just then he caught his foot on a 
tangle of roots and down he went and lay there 
moaning. That brought us to our senses. 

We can’t leave Benny, fellers,” Skinny told us. 
“ We must take turns carrying him. Here, Bill, 
you and I will be first. We’ll make a chair of our 
hands.” 

“ You don’t need to carry me,” said Benny, 
struggling to his feet, “ but take it slower a few 
minutes until I can get my breath. I don’t believe 
they are following. My side aches so I can hardly 
stand it.” 

As he spoke we heard another roar, but it came 
from far off and we knew that we were safe for a 
few minutes, anyhow. 


150 Some Astonishing Adventures 

“How about the man?” I asked, after we had 
gone along more slowly for a while. 

I guess that we all were thinking the same thing. 
We had been too scared at first to think about any¬ 
thing else. 

“He’s a goner by this time. We couldn’t help 
him any if we did go back.” 

“ Great snakes! ” yelled Bill, before we could 
say anything more. “ Here comes something 
else.” 

We heard a noise and, looking down a sand 
valley, saw a lot of camels coming toward us like 
a whirlwind, kicking up the sand with their feet. 
On their backs were Arabs. We knew that they 
were Arabs because they looked like pictures we 
had seen in books. Each one carried a long gun 
which he shook at us, at the same time yelling 
something which we couldn’t understand. 

We started to run again, but before we could 
take a dozen steps they were upon us. 

Maybe you never were lost in a desert and chased 
by lions and Arabs. If you were not you don’t 
know how we felt. 


Some Astonishing Adventures 151 

With a rush they went by, leaving us trying to 
hide in some bushes. 

‘‘Jerusalem!” said Skinny, as soon as he could 
speak. “ This is no place for us. They are looking 
for the lions and will be back in a minute. Come 
on.” 

We hurried along, trying to find our way out 
of that terrible wilderness, until Hank said, finally: 

“ Wait a minute. I am going to climb that hill 
and see where we are, lion or no lion.” 

He soon was at the top. Then he darted back 
and turned to us with such a look on his face that 
we all hurried up to him to see what was the matter. 
When we came near the top, he motioned for us 
to lie down and crawl. We would have done it, 
anyhow, for just then some shooting commenced 
again and it was on the other side of the hill. 

“ Injuns! ” gasped Skinny. “ We’re goners this 
time, sure.” 

This is what we saw: Up from the lake was 
marching a troop of white men, some on horses 
and some on foot, and facing them, at the bottom 
of the dune on which we were standing, were sev- 


152 Some Astonishing Adventures 

eral hundred Indians. We knew that they wer 
» Indians, although they were not* dressed like an 
Indians we had ever seen. The white men wei 
different, too. The Indians were armed with bows 
and arrows; some of the white men had guns and 
others crossbows. They were dragging along two 
cannon. 

“ Wake me up, somebody,” moaned Bill. “ Great 
snakes! ” he added in a moment. “ They are going 
to shoot.” 

As he spoke, smoke came out of the guns and 
then we could hear the report. Soon men with 
crossbows shot and the Indians sent a cloud of 
arrows flying toward the enemy. It was a sure 
enough battle and Indians and white men began 
to fall on every side. We could see them lying 
there on the sand, dead, or so badly wounded that 
they couldn’t get up. 

The whites shot again and the'Indians began to 
fall back toward us. We were so excited that we 
almost forgot to run, but the Indians were coming 
and the white men were shooting toward us and it 
didn’t seem safe to stay. 



It Was a Sure-Enough Battle, and Indians and White Men 

Began to Fall on Every Side 










































































Some Astonishing Adventures 153 

Once more we started back across the hills as 
fast as we could go, but in five minutes stopped 
again, for there in front of us were the walls of 
a city and a temple. Guarding the doorway of the 
temple were two idols, grinning horribly, and in 
the doorway were more Indians. 

We didn’t dare go on and we couldn’t go back 
and we didn’t understand it at all, for we never 
had heard of a city of that kind being among the 
sand dunes, or anywhere in the United States. 

“ Fellers,” said Skinny, “ we’re up against the 
real thing and I guess that we’re done for. That 
ain’t any city and those ain’t Injuns. They’re 
ghosts; that’s what they are. These sand dunes 
are ha’nted. I read it in a book.” 

“ Let’s hide in the bushes,” I told him. “ They 
are coming on a run.” 

“ We can hide, all right, but it won’t do any 
good. You can’t hide from ghosts. They see right 
through anything. They can see around a corner.” 

I heard one of the boys saying something about 
never having heard of ghosts shooting, as we were 
crawling into a clump of bushes. We were just in 


154 Some Astonishing Adventures 

time. Almost before we were out of sight they 
swept over us, yelling and shooting, but I didn’t 
see them. I was looking at Hank and wondering 
if he had gone crazy. 

He stood up on his feet as if he was not afraid 
of ghosts or anything, staring over to one 
side. I looked and saw a man aiming something 
and turning a crank. 

“ Hank,” I called, as low as I could and make 
him hear. “ Lie down. It’s a machine gun.” 

“ Gun, nothin’! ” said he. “ It’s a camera; that’s 
what it is, and we’re a set of chumps. He’s taking 
moving pictures.” 

It was as plain as could be all in a minute, and 
I wondered that we had not known it before, but 
seeing such things out there in the wilds was no 
laughing matter. We all jumped up when Hank 
said that and I could see that Skinny was mad. 

“ Hey, you! ” shouted the man. “ Get out of the 
picture.” 

“ Moving pictures! ” said Skinny, sitting down 
again. “ Wouldn’t that jar you?” 

He started to unwind his rope. 


Some Astonishing Adventures 155 

“ Are you going to lasso them, Skinny?” whis¬ 
pered Benny. 

“ No,” he said, “ but I’m going back and lasso 
those lions. I’ll bet that they are so old they 
couldn’t bite if they wanted to.” 

“ Wait,” said Harry. “ Let’s see what they are 
going to do. I never saw them take moving pictures 
before.” 

That is how we came to see the conquest of 
Mexico by Cortez, four hundred years after it really 
happened, and it was a queer-looking sight. It was 
no wonder that we were scared. We had run across 
a moving picture company, who had come out from 
Chicago to get desert pictures in the nearest thing 
to a desert that there is this side of Africa. The 
lions which had frightened us were old, as Skinny 
had said; besides, they had been doped with some¬ 
thing and had no teeth, but they could roar. The 
wild man was an actor. The camera man had been 
out of sight when we looked or we should have 
known what it all was about in the first place. 

The camels and Arabs were another desert pic¬ 
ture and the battle between the Indians and whites 


156 Some Astonishing Adventures 

was the conquest of Mexico. The make-believe 
Hernando Cortez landed on the shore of Lake 
Michigan, just as the real Cortez had landed on 
the coast of Mexico, where the city of Vera Cruz 
now stands. The Aztecs attacked them and would 
have beaten them, too, if they had not been afraid 
of the horses. You see, they had never seen horses 
before and they thought that each horse and the 
man on top of him was all one animal, some strange 
kind of monster that would eat them up. When 
they saw the horses come galloping toward them 
they ran into the city, which was afterward cap¬ 
tured. 

The city, which had been built on some high, 
level ground up among the dunes, was meant for 
the City of Mexico. It was not so far back from 
the lake, of course, as the real City of Mexico was 
from the ocean, but that didn’t make any difference 
in taking the pictures. We saw them drag up their 
wooden cannon and after a fierce fight, take the 
city. 

Maybe you will see the pictures sometime at a 
moving picture show: see the lions fighting with 


Some Astonishing Adventures 157 

the wild man; the camels and Arabs in the desert, 
and the conquest of Mexico. Then, if you have 
read about the doings of our patrol you will know 
how the pictures were taken and maybe you will 
be as surprised as we were to see a real desert a 
few miles from Chicago. But I hope that you will 
not be as scared as we were. It was all of a week 
before we began to grow again. 

We were so interested in seeing the City of 
Mexico captured and afterwards in talking with 
the “ Indians,” who were art students from Chicago, 
that it began to grow dark before we even thought 
of going back to camp. When we did think of 
it, we left in a hurry, for we had had all the scares 
that we wanted. We didn’t care to be caught out 
after dark among the dunes, even if the lions didn’t 
have any teeth. 

It is hard walking across the hills and through 
the sand, but along the beach, close to the water, 
the wind and waves had packed the sand hard, until 
it was better than a sidewalk. We decided to walk 
along the shore two or three miles before turning 
off into the dunes. 


158 Some Astonishing Adventures 

“ We can’t get lost,” Skinny told us. “ Here 
is the lake; there are the dunes, and on the other 
side of the dunes is the railroad. All we will have 
to do when we turn off is to find the railroad and 
follow it into Chesterton.” 

Just the same, we hadn’t been climbing around 
among the sand hills twenty minutes after leaving 
the lake shore when I noticed a clump of trees 
straight ahead, which I knew we had passed on our 
right ten minutes before. We had been going 
around in a circle and not one of us knew which 
way was the railroad, or which was the lake, and 
it was getting darker every minute. 

It is different when you are among the sand 
dunes in the daytime, or when you are lost any¬ 
where in the daytime. We were lost on Greylock 
Mountain once, at home, in the daytime, and it 
didn’t seem nearly so bad. 

If there had been moss on the trunks of the 
trees, as there was on Greylock, we could have 
found our way, because it grows on the north side 
of the trees sometimes. But the trees in the sand 
were small and didn’t have any moss. If it hadn’t 


Some Astonishing Adventures 159 

been cloudy we should have been all right, because 
Mr. Norton, our Scoutmaster, had showed us how 
to find the Big Dipper in the sky and then look for 
the North Star, which always shows which way 
north is. To make matters worse, everybody 
wanted to go in a different direction. 

Finally, after we had been chasing around, I 
don’t know how long, Skinny stopped us. 

“ Mr. Norton,” he said, “ told us never to lose 
our heads. When anything happens, he says, we 
must keep cool and think it out carefully; decide 
what is best to do and then do it.” 

“ It’s time somebody did some tall thinking, 
then,” Hank told him, “ unless we want to stay here 
all night, for we are miles from camp and don’t 
know which way to go.” 

“ Guess what,” Benny said, after we all had 
talked it over. “ Let’s divide up into twos and go 
four different ways. We can signal to each other 
with matches; that is, if we have matches enough.” 

The boys all felt in their pockets and found 
that they had matches. It isn’t safe to be without 
matches when you are camping and we always carry 


160 Some Astonishing Adventures 

them, sometimes corked up in little bottles so that 
they will not get damp. 

“ Look for lights from the tops of the hills. 
Where there are lights there are folks.” 

“ And where there are folks,” Skinny added, 
“ there is something to eat. I am so hungry that 
I could almost eat one of those lions.” 

We did that, each couple climbing a different hill. 
Then, by calling back and forth, we were able to 
make our way down and come together again. 
After we had been climbing and looking for what 
seemed a long time, we heard a shout from one 
of the boys and hurried up his hill. 

He pointed to a light, which we could see bob¬ 
bing along. It looked as if somebody was carrying 
a lighted lantern. A little beyond we could see a 
steady light, as if coming from the window of a 
house. 

We took our bearings carefully; then, keeping 
together, we hurried in the direction of the lights. 
After a time we climbed another hill, to make sure. 
The lantern was gone, but we could see the light 
from the house quite plain; it was so much nearer. 


Some Astonishing Adventures 161 

From there on it was easy except that it was 
hard walking through the sand, and pretty soon we 
came to the railroad and knew that we were all 
right. 

“ I don’t know when we will get back to camp,” 
said Skinny, “ but we are not lost; that’s sure. It 
won’t make much difference, anyhow, for if we 
don’t want to go clear to camp we can sleep out 
under the trees near Chesterton.” 

Just then I heard Bill, who was on ahead, say, 
“ Great snakes! ” in such a voice that I knew some¬ 
thing was the matter. 

“ Boys, come here, quick,” he called. 

We hurried along and then stopped, paralyzed. 
There on the track was a pile of ties, enough to 
wreck any train, and they were fastened to the 
rails with chains. 

It scared us for a minute; then Skinny burst out 
laughing. 

“ Some more moving pictures,” said he. “ Gee, 
this is their busy day, all right. But betcher life 
the Band is on to them. They can fool Raven 
Patrol once, but they can’t do it again. I’ll tell you 


162 Some Astonishing Adventures 

what let’s do. Let’s hang around and get in the 
picture. They are going to play hold up a train.” 

“But, Skinny,” said Hank, who has a camera 
and knows a lot about such things, “ how are they 
going to take pictures at night? ” 

“ They can let off a flashlight, can’t they? ” 

We could see in a minute what they were up to 
and we made up our minds to get in it, if they would 
let us, just as Skinny had said. 

“ Guess what,” said Benny, “ they ought to have 
a few lions around, without any teeth, to make it 
real exciting.” 

“ I’ll lasso one of the passengers, just as the flash 
goes off,” Skinny told us. “ That will make things 
lively.” 

All this time we were walking toward a light 
which we could see shining out of the window in 
a little building down the track, looking for the 
moving picture men. When we had come nearer 
we found that it was a little telegraph station; but 
Benny was wrong when he said that where there 
are lights there are folks, because the station was 
empty when we looked in. 


Some Astonishing Adventures 163 

“ I wonder where they are,” said Harry. 

Just then we heard a rough voice behind us say: 

“ Get in there, every one of you, and don’t you 
make a sound. If you do I’ll blow your heads off.” 

We turned and could see a man standing back 
in the shadow, where we couldn’t see his face. 

“ In with you,” he said again. 

“ Aw, say,” coaxed Skinny; “ let us be in it. We 
won’t hurt anything. We came near getting in the 
ones back on the lake shore. Come on; I’ll lasso 
one of the passengers. It will be great.” 

“ What do you know about it, Red?” said the 
man to somebody back in the dark. “ The kid wants 
to be in it. What did you say you were in over 
on the lake? ” he asked, turning to us again. 

“ The moving pictures. We were scared at first, 
until we found out what they were.” 

When Skinny said that the man gave a little 
snort. 

“Movin’ pictures!” said he. “There ain’t no 
movin’ pictures about-” 

Just then the other man called to him, and after 
telling us to stand still, he went back a few steps 



164 Some Astonishing Adventures 

and they whispered together. When he came again 
he said: 

“ It will be ’most an hour before the moving- 
picture stunt will be pulled off. You boys will have 
to go inside and wait.” 

“ We can’t wait an hour,” Skinny told him, “ but 
we’re much obliged, just the same. Maybe we can 
come over to-morrow, if you will take some more 
then.” 

We started on when Skinny said that, for we 
knew that we ought to be getting back and that if 
Mr. Norton did come home he would be worried 
not to find us. The man stopped us. 

“ Did you hear me tell you to get in there? ” said 
he. “ Shall I truss ’em up, Red ? One of the kids 
has got a rope.” 

“ Who would have thought that there would be 
a pack of boys along here this time of night,” said 
the other. “We don’t want to hurt the kids, but 
it won’t do to let them go on and give the alarm. 
Cut the telephone wire and lock them in the sta¬ 
tion.” 


“ Where’s the operator? ” 


Some Astonishing Adventures 165 

“ We’ve got him safe enough up in the bushes. 
He won’t give us any trouble.” 

“ Now, look here,” the man said, turning to us. 
“ You heard him. Will you stay quiet in the sta¬ 
tion, or will we have to tie you up ? ” 

“ We’d rather stay quiet,” said Benny, “ only Mr. 
Norton will be wondering where we are.” 

“ I’ll wait outside the window,” the man went 
on, after he had fixed the telephone so that we 
couldn’t use it. “ If one of you puts a head outside 
I’ll knock it offi Do you get me? And if you 
make a sound until we turn you loose, I’ll tie you up 
so tight that you can’t wiggle, and gag you in 
the bargain.” 

With that he shut and locked the door and left 


us there alone. 


CHAPTER XII 


TRAIN ROBBERS AT DUNE PARK 

I F you never saw anybody who was scared, you 
ought to have seen the Boy Scouts of Bob’s 
Hill about that time. We stood there, looking at 
each other and at Skinny, he being patrol leader. 
He was almost pale and I saw him wetting his lips 
with his tongue. 

I don’t know how long we stood there, too scared 
to think and hardly breathing. There was not a 
sound except the clicking of a telegraph instru¬ 
ment, as the railroad messages went over the wires. 

At first, we didn’t hear that even; didn’t hear 
anything except the beating of our hearts. Mine 
was thumping so loud that I was afraid the man 
would hear it outside. Perhaps the machine didn’t 
click at first, but after a little I heard it. Then I 
saw Hank give a start and look in that direction, 
as if he was thinking of something. 

166 


Train Robbers at Dune Park 167 

“The telegraph!” he whispered, beckoning for 
us to come closer. “If we only knew how we could 
give the alarm.” 

“ That’s what,” Skinny whispered back. “ But 
we don’t know how. We’re up against the real 
thing this time. Somebody is going to get hurt 
when the train strikes those ties.” 

“ We’ve got to do something. They use the same 
letters in sending telegrams as we do in our smoke 
signals.” 

“ Smoke is different,” said Bill. “ I sent smoke 
signals that time I was lost on Greylock, but I 
couldn’t have telegraphed. Besides, the man will 
shoot us or something, if we move.” 

But Hank kept looking at the clicking instrument 
and thinking. Finally, he straightened up and I 
saw his jaw set, like it does sometimes when you 
know that you ought to do a thing and make up 
your mind to do it, no matter what happens. 

“ I’m going to try it, anyhow,” said he, still whis¬ 
pering. “ They can’t any more than kill me. I 
watched a telegraph operator once. You stand 
where you are and don’t make a sound. Don’t look 


168 Train Robbers at Dune Park 

at me, or the man will see. I’m going to get a 

drink.” 

I was thirsty myself, but that wasn’t any time 
to be getting a drink. Before we could stop him, 
Hank walked slowly to a pail of water that stood 
in one corner of the room and took a drink. I was 
watching out of the corners of my eyes and saw 
him take out his handkerchief and wipe his lips; 
then, as he was putting the handkerchief back in 
his pocket, it fell on the floor. 

He stooped to get it and waited there on the 
floor, out of sight from the window, to see if the 
man would say anything; then, when no sound came 
from the outside, began to crawl around the sides 
of the room. We couldn’t hear him and didn’t dare 
look, but we knew that he was slowly edging along 
toward the window, to pass under it. I thought it 
would take him forever and every second I ex¬ 
pected to see the man put his head in, but at last 
he reached the desk where the telegraph instrument 
was clicking, out of sight from the window. 

Then he stood up and took hold of the key. 

“ Train robbers, Dune Park,” was what he spelled 


Train Robbers at Dune Park 169 

out, or tried to, not knowing whether he was doing 
it right or not. 

He had started to spell it out again, when the 
man looked in at the window and missed him. The 
robber put his body part way in, looked around the 
room, and saw Hank fooling with the key. 

“ Drop that,” he said. “ Get back there where 
you belong. I’ll fix you so you won’t move again.” 

With that, he came inside and made us sit in a 
row on a bench. Then he took Skinny’s rope and 
tied us fast to the back. We could move our feet 
but we could not get up. 

“ That’s what I ought to have done in the first 
place,” said he. 

“ Did you send it, Hank?” whispered Skinny, 
after the man had gone out again. 

“ I don’t know. I tried to, but I don’t know 
whether anyone could get the message or not.” 

So we sat there and waited, but Skinny was get¬ 
ting mad because the man had tied him with his 
own rope. 

All the time the telegraph thing went on clicking 
and trying to say something which we couldn’t un- 


170 Train Robbers at Dune Park 

derstand, or, anyhow, that was what it seemed like. 
We listened as hard as we could, trying to tell which 
clicks were meant for dots and which for dashes and 
to spell out the words, but it wasn’t any use: we 
couldn’t make it out at all. 

It seemed like a month to us sitting there, won¬ 
dering whether Hank had made them understand 
or not and whether they would have time to do 
anything, even if they did understand. Every sound 
made us jump. 

The man had done a good job of tying, using 
small cord to tie our wrists together back of us and 
the rope to fasten us to the bench. I pulled at mine, 
until I thought that my wrists would be cut 
off and so did all the boys, but we couldn’t get 
loose. 

Finally, after we had given up and were sitting 
there waiting, Skinny all of a sudden said: 

“ Hark!” 

Everybody had been harking as hard as he could 
before that, but when Skinny spoke we sat up 
straight and listened. Away off in the distance we 
heard the whistle of an engine. 


Train Robbers at Dune Park 171 

“ She’s coming,” groaned Hank. “ I didn’t make 
them understand.” 

The men heard it, too, for they began to hustle 
around outside. We felt sure that nobody was left 
at the window. 

“ We might yell,” said Bill. “ It would be better 
than sitting still and doing nothing. I am hoarse, 
but I guess I could make a little noise, just the 
same.” 

“ Get ready,” said Skinny in a low tone. “ When 
I say three, everybody yell, and do your best. Now! 
One! Two! Three!” 

Every one of us gave a terrible screech. It was 
awful to hear, especially Bill Wilson’s. But there 
was no chance of making anybody hear except the 
robbers and the telegraph man, lying somewhere in 
the bushes; we didn’t know where. 

Just after we yelled, there came another whistle, 
this time nearer; then a rumble and roar. 

“ She’s going past,” said Skinny with a groan. 
“ You tried, all right, Hank, but you are no good 
on the telegraph. She’ll hit the ties in a second.” 

“No; she’s stopping.” 


172 Train Robbers at Dune Park 

We could hear the brakes go on. Then came a 
shot and answering shots; then a whole lot of them, 
sounding like the battle did on the lake front. We 
could hear the voices of men and footsteps running 
through the sand, and some more shooting up 
among the hills. 

“ Oh, I didn’t make them understand, didn’t I ? ” 
said Hank. “ Oh, no, maybe not! ” 

It made us feel good all through, and Skinny 
grew real chesty about it. 

“ You are all right, Hank,” said he. “ Say, didn’t 
I tell you that they would know who was around 
here before we got through with them ? I hope they 
filled those ginks full of holes—using my rope to 
tie us with! ” 

We didn’t hear anything more for a few seconds 
and began to be afraid that the train was getting 
ready to go on, with us still tied. 

“ Let’s yell again,” said Dick. “ There is some¬ 
body to hear this time. Count again, Skinny.” 

I’ll bet it sounded like a band of Indians. Any¬ 
how, in a minute we heard some men come running 
up to the station. One of them tried the door and 


Train Robbers at Dune Park 173 

finding it locked put his head in at the window, 
holding a revolver ready to shoot. 

“ Don’t shoot, mister,” yelled Skinny. “ It’s only 
us.” 

“For the love of Pete!” exclaimed the man. 
“ Bill, come here.” 

“ I can’t,” said Bill Wilson. “ I’m tied.” 

But the man was talking to another Bill, and 
just then he looked in at the window and saw us 
sitting there in a row. 

“ It’s a Sunday school,” said he. “ Where’s the 
teacher? ” 

“ What are you kids doing here ? ” asked the 
other. “ Open the door and let us in.” 

“ We’re tied,” we told them. “ The robbers tied 
us and locked us in, for fear that we would give 
the alarm.” 

When the men heard that it didn’t take them 
long to break in the door, but it took quite a while 
to untie us, because Skinny wouldn’t let them cut 
his rope. 

“ How did you come to be here ? ” 

“ We had been over seeing the moving pictures,” 


174 Train Robbers at Dune Park 

Benny told him, “ and were on our way home, when 
we saw the ties. We thought this was one, too, but 
it wasn’t. The robbers saw us and locked us in 
here.” 

“ Where is the operator? ” 

“ We heard them say that he was tied up in the 
bushes somewhere.” 

“ You boys come along and help find him. We 
can’t hold that train much longer.” 

We had to look several minutes, but finally we 
heard someone groaning in the bushes and found 
him lying there, bound and gagged. He couldn’t 
talk at first, or walk, but after the men had helped 
him down to the station and given him some water 
he felt better. 

Just then the other men came back. 

“ You might as well look for a needle in a hay¬ 
mow as to try to find them at night in these sand 
dunes,” one of them was saying. “ They’d see us 
coming with the lanterns and would get the drop 
on us, sure. We’ve saved the train, anyhow, 
and they will have hard work getting very 
far.” 


Train Robbers at Dune Park 175 

It surprised them some to find us boys there, 
but they didn’t pay much attention to us and com¬ 
menced asking the operator questions about how 
the men looked, when they tied him up, and things 
like that. 

The operator told them that when he first saw 
the robbers he thought they were hunters on their 
way home, for hunters go by there almost every 
day. 

“ But when they pulled their guns on me, I tum¬ 
bled,” he said. 

“ It’s lucky that you had a chance to send the 
message. I don’t see how you did it when they had 
the drop on you.” 

“ Message ? I didn’t send any message. What 
are you talking about ? ” 

“ Who did, then ? Somebody telegraphed that 
there were train robbers at Dune Park, or we 
shouldn’t have known anything about it until after 
it happened.” 

“ We sent it,” Skinny told them. “ Betcher life 
they don’t wreck any trains when Raven Patrol is 
around.” 


176 Train Robbers at Dune Park 
‘"'You! What do a lot of kids like you know 
about telegraphing ? ” 

“ We are Boy Scouts,” said Skinny, sort of mad 
to have him talk that way about us. “We know 
all kinds of things. We saw a train wreck once 
and helped bandage the passengers who got hurt. 
Didn’t we, fellers ? ” 

“ We didn’t all send it,” Benny explained, when 
the man still didn’t seem to understand. “ Hank 
did it. Didn’t you, Hank ? ” 

“ Well, the rest of you would have done it, if I 
hadn’t,” said Hank. “ You see,” he went on, turn¬ 
ing to the man who was asking the questions and 
who seemed to be the boss, “ we belong to the Boy 
Scouts of America and are camping over on Long 
Lake, south of Chesterton. Every first-class Boy 
Scout has to know how to signal with the Morse 
letters. We never had tried telegraphing, but it 
was up to us to do something; so we did that. 
That’s why they tied us up. They saw me fooling 
with the telegraph key. But they didn’t think that 
I had sent any message.” 


Train Robbers at Dune Park 177 

“Well, what do you know about that!” said 
the man. 

“ The express company ought to give every one 
of you a leather medal for this night’s work. 
There’s a barrel of money on that train.” 

When he said that I saw Skinny and Bill nudging 
each other and saying, “ You do it.” “ No, you.” 
Then they whispered to me, being secretary. 

“ Well, what is it? ” said the man. 

“If you’ll let us ride as far as Chesterton and 
stop the train there for us to get off, we’ll call it 
square.” 

There was a great laugh at that, although we 
couldn’t see anything to laugh at. We were tired 
and mighty hungry. In a few minutes we were on 
the train, hurrying toward Chesterton, trying to 
make up lost time. Folks wondered why the fast 
train from Chicago stopped at Chesterton that night, 
but they didn’t find out until afterwards. 

The man took our names on the way over be¬ 
cause, he said, the company would want to send us 
a card of thanks and maybe something with it. 

“ We are Boy Scouts,” Hank told him, “ and 


178 Train Robbers at Dune Park 

Scout law says that we have to help people and 
must not expect to be paid for it. We must try to 
do a good deed every day.” 

“ That’s a good law,” he said, “ but a few thanks 
won’t hurt anybody, and if they should send some¬ 
thing better than thanks, don’t send it back. Least¬ 
wise,” he went on, winking at the others, “ if you 
must send it to somebody, let Yours Truly be the 
recipient of your bounty.” 

We found out that Hank’s message was just in 
time. The train dispatcher in Chicago caught it 
as it was going over the wire. He said that if it 
had been sent by somebody who knew how, he 
might not have noticed it, but Hank made such 
funny-sounding clicks that he caught it right away 
and knew there was trouble. The rest was easy. 
The train was ready to start. It was sent out on 
time as usual, and a lot of armed men went with 
it, in order to catch the robbers if they could. When 
the train neared Dune Park the engineer slowed 
down a little and kept his eyes glued to the track, 
for he expected to find ties, or something. The 
men with guns were off the train before it came to 


Train Robbers at Dune Park 179 

a stop, but the robbers were too quick for them 
and got away among the sand hills. 

We hadn’t much more than started aw^ay from 
the depot in Chesterton when a policeman came 
running up to us. 

“ Are you the kids that are camping on Long 
Lake with a man named Norton?” he asked. 

It scared us some, for we thought he was going 
to run us in. But we told him that we were. 

“ Well, what are you doing here at this time of 
night? Norton is nearly crazy about you. He has 
been keeping the telephone wires hot for the last 
hour and we were just going out with an automo¬ 
bile to look you up.” 

When we told him about the robbers, you ought 
to have seen his eyes bulge out. It made us feel 
proud. 

“ Here,” said he, “ you boys deserve a ride. Pile 
into the machine and I’ll take you back to camp.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


LETTERS FOR MR. G. MILLER 

“O AY, are you the boys who are camping out 
^ on Long Lake?” asked a clerk in the Val¬ 
paraiso post office one morning, a few days after 
our visit to the dunes. 

Benny and I had stopped in there to buy some 
stamps. It was our turn to go to town after sup¬ 
plies. By that time nearly everybody in the city 
knew that there was a Boy Scout Camp out there 
and the Vidette had our names in the paper on ac¬ 
count of the train robbers. 

We told him that we were guilty. 

“ Is Mr. G. Miller camping with you? ” 

“ No,” I said, “ Mr. Norton is. He is our Scout¬ 
master.” 

“ I am afraid he won’t do. You see we have a 
couple of letters here for Mr. G. Miller, Long Lake 

Camp, near Valparaiso, Indiana. How in Sam Hill 
180 


Letters for Mr. G. Miller 181 

do they expect me to know everybody on Long 
Lake?” 

“ There is a new camp up the lake from us. We 
don’t know the people yet. Maybe he’s there.” 

“ Well, if you happen to see him, tell him to come 
in and get his letters. We can’t deliver out there.” 

A little later, when we were buying some things 
at the grocery, Benny commenced to laugh. I 
thought he would have a fit. 

“What’s the joke?” I said. “Bacon is still 
twenty-two cents a pound and that’s no joke, be¬ 
lieve me. We are ’most out of money.” 

“ Mr. G. Miller! ” he said, slapping me on the 
back. “ It’s Skinny, that’s who it is.” 

You could have knocked me down with a feather 
when Benny said that. Of course it was Skinny. 
His front name is Gabriel, but he hardly knows it 
himsdf. I’ve heard his folks call him Skinny, but 
I never heard anybody call him G. or Mister, ex 
cept Alice that time. 

We went back to the post office and got the let 
ters. The clerk wouldn’t believe us at first, because 
we had said that there wasn’t any such person 


182 


Letters for Mr. G. Miller 


our camp, but after we had told him how it was 
he laughed and let us have the letters. Both of them 
were from Chicago. One was from the Railroad 
Company and the other from the Express Com¬ 
pany. 

It made us excited to see those letters and we 
hurried back to camp as soon as we could. We 
found Skinny out in a boat, fishing, but he pulled 
in to shore when Benny held up the letters for him 
to see. 

“ Didn’t I tell you folks would find out that we 
were here? ” said he, looking at the letters all over 
and holding them up to the sun to see what was 
inside. 

“ Great snakes! Open them, Mr. G. Miller,” 
said Bill. “ But break the news to us gently. We 
can’t stand much.” 

Skinny opened them one after the other; then 
stood there, speechless, his eyes sticking out like 
saucers. 

“ Ladies and gentlemen,” said Bill, winking at 
the rest of us, “ Mr. G. Miller will now go into the 
fitting room and have a fit.” 


Letters for Mr. G. Miller 183 

At that Skinny came to and handed the letters 
over to Bill. 

“Great snakes and little fishes!” he shouted, 
after he had looked at them. 

When he had said that he stood on his hands, 
kicking his heels in the air and cawing to beat the 
band. 

There is only one thing to do at a time like that 
and, being secretary, I did it. There was a barrel 
stave lying on the ground, handy. I grabbed it 
and gave Bill the'occidental degree in great shape, 
laying it on good and plenty where it belonged. 

Bill gave a roar and tumbled over on the grass, 
while Hank snatched the letters from him. 

“ Let us all hear,” called Dick. “ Stand on the 
stump and read them out loud.” 

So Hank did that, and we were as much excited 
as the others, when we heard what the letters had 
to say. Here is what the Express Company 
wrote: 

“ Mr. G. Miller, Long Lake, Valparaiso, Ind. 

“ Dear Sir : In appreciation of the services of 
your Boy Scouts, which resulted in saving us from a 


184 Letters for Mr. G. Miller 

serious loss at Dune Park several nights ago, the 
Company wishes not only to thank you but to show 
its appreciation in a more substantial manner. We 
understand that you are camping out on Long Lake 
and while we have been informed that Boy Scouts 
do not expect to be rewarded for their good deeds, 
we ask you as a special favor to us to permit us 
to pay your expenses during your outing. If the 
enclosed check is not enough to do it, we’ll make 
up the balance. We wish especially to thank the 
boy who sent the alarm and if he ever wants a 
good job he has only to present this letter by mail 
or in person to an officer of this Company.” 


Hank was so excited that a little breeze tore the 
check from his hands and it went sailing down 
toward the lake, the whole bunch of us chasing it 
and falling all over ourselves trying to grab it. 
Benny was the one who caught it. He gave one look 
and yelled: 

“ Gee! Everybody caw! ” 

There was an awful racket for a minute. Then 
the check was passed from one to the other, while 
Bill climbed up on the stump, flapped his arms, and 
crowed like a rooster. 

“ Skinny,” said he, when he had stopped the 


Letters for Mr. G. Miller 185 

rooster business, “ I mean Mr. President, Mr. G. 
President, may I speak and live?” 

“ You may,” said Skinny, “ or forever after hold 
your peace.” 

“ I make a motion that the secretary must put 
the check in the minutes of the meetin’.” 

“ Don’t put the check in,” I told them. “ We 
need that.” 

“ Pedro,” said he, “ you’ll never make a good 
secretary. Putting it in the minutes means to write 
it in, not to put the real check in.” 

“ Why don’t you say write it, then ? ” I told him. 

“ Everybody that wants Pedro to tell about the 
check,” shouted Bill, before Skinny could speak, 
“ walk on their hands.” 

Bill was the only one because he is the only one 
that can do it, but I’ll put it in, just the same, and 
here it is as I remember it: 

First National Bank of Chicago, Illinois. 
Pay to the order of G. Miller Two Hun¬ 
dred Dollars... $200.00 

Somebody or other, 

Treasurer. 



186 Letters for Mr. G. Miller 


We couldn’t read the writing where the man 
signed his name, but that didn’t make any difference. 
We knew that it would be good for the money, just 
the same. 

“ I can’t make it come out even,” said Skinny, 
who had been figuring on a board. “ There are 
nine of us and it comes to $22.22 and all kinds 
of two’s after it, until you can’t rest.” 

“ Guess what,” spoke up Benny. “ Mr. Norton 
counts for one, doesn’t he? That makes ten and 
it comes out just even.” 

We were so excited over having so much money 
that we almost forgot the other letter, until some¬ 
body asked about it. 

“ Read the other, Hank,” we told him. So he 
climbed the stump once more and read in a loud 
voice, we listening and growing more excited than 
before. It was from the General Passenger 
Agent. 

“ Mr. G. Miller and Party, Long Lake, Val¬ 
paraiso, Ind. 

" Dear Sirs : In recognition of your services in 
preventing the robbery of one of our trains at Dune 


Letters for Mr. G. Miller 187 

Park, the other night, I take pleasure in inclosing 
an order, which will be honored by our Valparaiso 
agent, for nine first-class tickets to Adams, Mass., 
where I understand that you live. Let me say fur¬ 
ther that the Boy Scout uniform hereafter will re¬ 
ceive every courtesy throughout our railroad system, 
as a result of your timely action.” 

When Mr. Norton came in, he was almost as 
tickled as we were. 

“How about it, Mr. Norton?” Hank asked, 
finally. “ Can we take this money? Isn’t it against 
Scout law ? ” 

“ Well, let us see. Suppose that we repeat the 
law. You begin, Hank, with the first.” 

“ 4 A Scout is trustworthy. A Scout’s honor is 
to be trusted. If he were to violate his honor by 
telling a lie, or by cheating, or by not doing exactly 
a given task, when trusted on his honor, his Scout 
badge could be taken away from him.’ ” 

“ Number two.” 

“ 4 A Scout is loyal,’ ” I said. 

“ ‘ He is loyal to all to whom loyalty is due; his 
patrol leader, his home, parents, and country.’ ” 


Letters for Mr. G. Miller 


“ We are all right so far, as the man said when 
he was falling from a sixteenth-story window. 
What is the next one, Bill? ” 

“ ‘ A Scout is helpful. 

“ ‘ He must be prepared at any time to save life, 
help injured persons, and share the home duties. 
He must do at least one good turn to somebody 
every day.’ ” 

“ Next, Skinny.” 

“ ‘ A Scout is n lendly. 

“ ‘ He is a triend to all and a brother to every 
other Scout.’ ” 

“ The next one is the one, I think,” said Hank. 
“ It says: 

“ ‘ A Scout is courteous. He is polite to all, espe¬ 
cially to women, children, old people, and the weak 
and helpless.’ My book says that he must not take 
pay for being helpful or courteous.” 

“ We certainly seem to be getting warm. Before 
we discuss it, suppose that we go through the list. 
What is the sixth law ? ” 

“ ‘ A Scout is kind,’ ” said Benny. “ * He is a 
friend to animals. He will not kill or hurt any 


Letters for Mr. G. Miller 189 

living creature needlessly, but will strive to save 
and protect all harmless life/ ” 

“ The next, Harry/' 

“ ‘ A Scout is obedient. 

“ ‘ He obeys his parents, Scoutmaster, patrol 
leader, and all other duly constituted authori¬ 
ties/ ” 

“ You fellers want to remember that about obey¬ 
ing the patrol leader,” said Skinny, “ or I'll put a 
head on some of you. I have spoken.” 

“ What is the next one? ” 

“ ‘ A Scout is cheerful/ ” said Wally. “ ‘ He 
smiles whenever he can. His obedience to orders is 
prompt and cheery. He never shirks nor grumbles 
at hardships/ ” 

“ Listen to this,” said Hank, fishing a book out 
of his pocket. “ ‘ A Scout is thrifty. He does not 
wantonly destroy property. He works faithfully, 
wastes nothing, and makes the best use of his op¬ 
portunities. He saves his money so that he may 
pay his own way, be generous to those in need, 
and helpful to worthy objects/ Then it goes on 
to say at the bottom, ‘ He may work for pay, but 


190 Letters for Mr. G. Miller 

must not receive tips for courtesies or good 

turns.’ ” 

“ We might as well go through with them. Read 
the others.” 

“ To. A Scout is brave. He has the courage to 
face danger in spite of fear and has to stand up for 
the right against the coaxings of friends or the 
jeers or threats of enemies, and defeat does not 
down him. 

“ ‘ 11. A Scout is clean. He keeps clean in body 
and thought, stands for clean speech, clean sport, 
clean habits, and travels with a clean crowd. 

“ ‘ 12. A Scout is reverent. He is reverent to¬ 
ward God. He is faithful in his religious duties 
and respects the convictions of others in matters of 
custom and religion.’ ” 

“ There, we have them all, and good laws they 
are. Boys who live up to those laws will make the 
finest kind of men. Two of them seem to bear upon 
Hank’s question, but I am inclined to think that in 
this particular case no good purpose would be served 
in refusing the money or the tickets. You certainly 
did a great public service and while you did not do 


Letters for Mr. G. Miller 191 

it for pay or expect to be rewarded, the two com¬ 
panies owe it to the public whom they serve to 
recognize a service of that kind. What do you say, 
Mr. Patrol Leader?” 

“ I say,” said Skinny, “ that I’ll risk it, if the rest 
will.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE RAVENS FIND A RIVAL CAMP 

HINGS were pretty quiet after that for a 



1 long time, three or four days, anyhow, but 
that does not mean that we were not having fun. 
There can’t be something happening every minute, 
although Pa says to leave it to us and there will be 
something doing every day in the week. 

After the railroad tickets and expense money were 
sent us we didn’t have to pick any more berries, and 
we were not sorry. Berry picking is hard work 
when you have to do it. If you are picking for fun 
it seems to make a difference. I’ve picked blue¬ 
berries halfway up Greylock, with the sun pouring 
down until the bowlders, showing above ground, 
were too hot to step upon with bare feet, and have 
played Indian around there, without minding the 
heat very much; but some of the mornings in that 
huckleberry patch were fierce. 


The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 193 

That gave us more time to play and to practice 
our Scout stunts, and we kept Mr. Norton busy 
when he wasn’t in Chicago. When night came we 
usually were tired enough to go to bed with the 
birds, except when there were some doings in the 
evening, and we usually were up with the sun or 
soon after. 

It is different when you are in the country that 
way, camping out. At home we never are ready 
to go to bed and we have hard work getting up 
in the morning in time for school. 

I woke up one morning just as the day was dawn¬ 
ing and slipped out of the tent without waking the 
others. In the trees birds were beginning to twitter, 
telling one another that it was time to be stirring 
and chasing around after worms. A robin chirped a 
little to sort of try out his voice and then, catching 
the tune, commenced to sing to beat the band. An¬ 
other robin joined in the music and pretty soon they 
were all at it. From woods and lake-side came a 
chorus that people in large cities never hear. 

It was great, but I didn’t think much about it until 
Mr. Norton came out of his tent and stood listen- 


194 The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 

ing and watching the coming of the morning across 
the water. 

“ You are right, John,” he said, after a moment, 
although I had not said a word about it. “ I don’t 
know what Heaven is like or whether birds have 
souls, but it seems to me that it would be a poor 
sort of a place without bird music. I’d rather camp 
out here on Long Lake, listening to that concert 
and smelling the odors of the morning. Believe 
me, the angels will have to go some to beat those 
robins. Suppose that you call the other boys; sleep¬ 
ing is a waste of time.” 

I picked up a barrel stave and crept quietly into 
the tent. Skinny was dreaming of Bob’s Hill and 
lying exactly in the right position to be waked 
up. 

Whack! went the stave. There was a yell from 
Skinny and in a minute, before I had time to hit the 
others, there was a great scramble in and out of 
the tent, with Mr. Norton trying to keep out of the 
way. The boys soon grabbed me and rushed me 
down to the lake and to the end of our little pier. 
I didn’t care, although I hung back all I could. 


The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 195 

“Now, all together!” said Skinny. “In with 
him! Sick semper turn us! ” 

I just had time to draw in a long breath before 
I struck the water with a big splash and sank out 
of sight. In another minute all the others had 
jumped or pushed each other in and we were all 
splashing around in the water like so many por¬ 
poises. 

It was a fine way to begin the day, and we came 
out feeling as if we owned the whole world, with 
Long Lake thrown in, and as if we could eat every¬ 
thing in camp. Soon the smell of bacon, frying, 
almost drove us crazy and made us forget the 
birds. 

“ I like the smell of the woods,” Skinny told us, 
“ but it ain’t in it with bacon when you are hungry.” 

The griddle began to smoke and on went the 
pancake batter in little dabs that spread out in de¬ 
licious cakes, soon to be flopped over and browned 
on the other side. 

“ The coffee is ready,” sang out Mr. Norton. 
“ Get busy, boys, while these cakes are hot. We 
must get some more honey from the honey farm at 


196 The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 

Moss Lake to-day, but I guess there is enough for 
breakfast.” 

“ There will have to be lots to be enough,” Bill 
told him as we sat down. 

Did you ever eat bacon and eggs and pancakes 
and honey out in the woods, or on the shore of some 
lake or river, with nobody around to say that you 
have eaten ten cakes and that was enough for any¬ 
body? If you never did you have missed some¬ 
thing. 

We lay around a while, taking it easy, and then 
started in on our morning’s work. Some of us 
washed and wiped the dishes; others put the bedding 
out to air in the sunshine and slicked up the camp 
so that we would not be ashamed of it in case Mrs. 
Laurence and Alice should happen around. One 
bunch, headed by Skinny with his hatchet, went into 
the woods after a supply of wood. 

“ What are you going to do to-day, boys? ” asked 
Mr. Norton, after everything was in shape to leave. 

“ Some more of the same,” said Hank. “ Maybe 
I’ll go fishing. I haven’t been fishing since yester¬ 
day.” 


The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 197 

“ How would you like to go on a short hike and 
practice our signaling? You are pretty good at 
smoke signals, but we haven’t tried any wigwagging 
for some time.” 

That sounded good to us and soon after we 
started down the railroad track, intending to cross 
over to the main highway on Wahob Lake road, 
then hike to Chesterton and perhaps go on as far as 
Lake Michigan, north of the town. At Wahob 
Lake we stopped to try our signals. 

“ Part can stand on the bluff at this end,” Mr. 
Norton told us, “ and the others can go around 
to the opposite bluff. It is about half a mile 
across.” 

But when we all had climbed the bluff and looked 
across to pick out the right place to signal from, 
we saw something which changed our minds about 
going on to Chesterton. We hardly could believe 
our eyes, but on the other side of the lake, half 
hidden among the trees, was a camp which we knew 
had not been there a few days before. 

Mr. Norton took out his field glass and looked 
across and kept looking so long I thought that he 


198 The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 

never would get through. Finally, he handed the 
glasses to Skinny. 

“ See if you can make them out,” said he. 

“ Gee-whilikins! ” yelled Skinny, when he had 
looked. 

“ Let the rest of us see, can’t you ? ” Bill told 
him, grabbing for the glasses. “ What’s the use of 
keeping them all day? ” 

“ Great snakes! ” I heard him exclaim. “ See 
who’s here. Name it, Pedro, and you can have it.” 

I looked and grew as excited as the others. 

“ It’s a Boy Scout,” I shouted, “ I can see his 
uniform plain. There must be more of them. I 
don’t know who they are, or where they came from, 
but they are Boy Scouts, all right.” 

After that everyone had to look. We didn’t know 
what to make of it, but we felt glad about it, all 
except Skinny. 

“ Fellers,” said he, drawing away so that Mr. 
Norton wouldn’t hear him, “how about it? Is the 
Band going to stand for this? Ain’t these our 
lakes? Well, I guess yes. If we can lick the Ging¬ 
ham Ground Gang, betcher life we can lick these 


The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 199 

guys. I’ll be getting fat if I don’t have a fight 
pretty soon.” 

“ We ain’t the Band any more, Skinny,” I told 
him, for I wasn’t hankering after any fight. It’s 
fun, too, but what’s the use? “ We are Boy Scouts 
and can only fight the enemy.” 

“Well, they are the enemy, ain’t they?” 

“ How about doing somebody a kindness every 
day?” asked Benny. 

“ Wouldn’t it be a kindness to us to let us pitch 
into ’em ? Come on, let’s duck ’em in the lake.” 

“ Skinny’s got a chip on his shoulder to-day,” 
said Bill. 

“ You dassn’t knock it off, anyhow. Come on, 
if you dast.” 

Bill was just going to knock it off, when Mr. Nor¬ 
ton heard the fuss and turned around. 

“If anybody is interested in chips,” said he, 
“ there are some up in the woods which we need 
for our fire. We’ll have a lot of fun with those 
fellows. There seem to be enough of them so that 
you can have that ball game you have been wanting 
so long. Let’s speak to them.” 


200 The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 

"That’s the stuff,” cried Bill. “I’ll beat you 
around the lake, Skinny.” 

They were just starting off on a run when Mr. 
Norton called them back. 

“ There is a better way,” said he, “ although we 
will go over a little later and get acquainted. We 
came out to practice signaling, didn’t we? Well, 
here is our chance. Get out there with the flags, 
somebody, and show them what the Bob’s Hill boys 
can do.” 

Skinny grabbed the flags and went out to the edge 
of the bluff away from the trees and began to wave, 
while Mr. Norton watched through the glasses. 

“ They don’t see you,” he said, after a little time. 
“ I think it would be a good idea if our esteemed 
assistant patrol leader would give one of his yells. 
Can you make them hear, Bill? ” 

Bill didn’t waste any breath talking about it, but 
I thought he would turn himself inside out for a 
minute. Out over the water floated the blood¬ 
curdling sounds, while we watched to see what 
would happen. 

They heard, all right, and came down to the 


The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 201 

shore of the lake to see who was yelling. It made 
Bill proud. 

“ Skinny is great stuff for some things,” he said, 
“ but when you want something doing, call on little 
Willie.” 

“ Huh! ” Skinny began. “ I-” 

“ Get busy with the flags, Captain, while they 
are looking,” Mr. Norton told him. 

Skinny commenced to wave again, while I 
watched through the glasses. I could see the boys 
standing there, looking across at us and wondering, 
maybe, if we had gone crazy. Then one of them 
turned his head as if to call to somebody and I saw 
a man run out of one of the tents and look at us 
through a glass. 

“ Wave, Skinny,” I called. “ Wave hard. Their 
Scoutmaster is looking.” 

At the same time, I stepped out in front where 
I knew the Scoutmaster could see me through his 
glasses and raised three fingers of my right hand to 
my forehead. The other boys did the same, all but 
Skinny. He was too busy waving. 

That is the Scout salute and we are always sup- 



202 The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 

posed to salute an officer. The three fingers are to 
remind us of the three promises in the Scout 
oath. Before a boy can become a Scout he must 
promise: 

On my honor I will do my best: 

1. To do my duty to God and my country and 
to obey the Scout law. 

2. To help other people at all times. 

3. To keep myself physically strong, mentally 
awake, and morally straight. 

If you never had signaled with flags you couldn’t 
have told what Skinny was sending, but we knew 
and so did the Boy Scouts across the lake. A Boy 
Scout has to know all about such things before he 
can get a first-class Scout’s badge. There are sev¬ 
eral ways to signal with flags by day and lanterns, 
or torches, at night. Skinny was using what is 
called the semaphore code. Everybody has seen 
semaphore signals along a railroad track. There 
is a tall mast with an arm, or several arms. The 
signal man sets the arm at a certain angle 
and the engineer on the train knows what that 


means. 


The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 203 

We do the same in signaling with flags. The body 
is the mast and the way we hold our arms means 
a certain letter. The flags, or the torches, make it 
easier for the signal to be seen. By making letters 
we can spell out words and messages. It is easy 
when you know how, but it takes a lot of practice 
to be able to do it right and to read what the flags 
are saying. 

“ You watch through the glass, Pedro,” said Mr. 
Norton to me. “ Skinny cannot talk with the flags 
and hold the glasses at the same time. Our patrol 
leader seems to have lost that chip off his shoulder, 
so we will let him do the talking. We will take 
turns listening and you, being secretary, may start 
off first. This is a case of hearing with your eyes. 
Go carefully; we do not know how skillful those 
fellows are.” 

“ Let Benny write it down,” I said, “ while I call 
off the letters.” 

All this time Skinny had been waving to attract 
their attention. Then, when I saw that they had 
begun to understand what we were up to, I told 
him to go ahead with the message. 


204 The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 

“ H,” he spelled, “ E-L-L-” 

“ Guess what,” broke in Benny. “ That’s swear¬ 
ing, and it’s against Scout law.” 

Skinny looked around and grinned; then held the 
flag which was in his right hand straight out from 
the shoulder and brought the other across, in a 
position halfway between the other flag and his 
head. That meant O. Then he stopped and spelled 
the word again. 

“ Say, Skinny,” said Bill, “ if you think you are 
telephoning you’d better let me do it.” 

Skinny was too busy to say anything. I held up 
one hand for them to keep still, for one of the 
Scouts across the lake had taken up some flags and 
commenced to wave. 

“ H-e-l-l-o,” I spelled. 

“ Who are you? ” asked Skinny. 

“ Patrol 4, Troop i, Hyde Park, Chicago.” 

“ What are you doing here? ” 

“ Camping. We just came. Who are you? ” 

“ Patrol i, Troop 3, Adams, Mass.” 

“ What are you doing way out here ? ” 

“ Having fun.” 



The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 205 

Just then some other Scout caught up the flags 
and waved. 

“ Oh, Skinny, come on over.” 

“ They’ve heard about us! ” exclaimed Bill, who 
was taking the message. 

“ I think not,” laughed Mr. Norton. “ That 
seems to be a favorite salutation out here.” 

“ Come over yourself. Come halfway,” waved 
Skinny. 

“ All right,” spelled the flags. 

“ Come on, fellows,” said Mr. Norton. “ We will 
go to meet them.” 

At home if the Gingham Ground Gang had told 
us to come halfway it would have meant fight, but 
we knew that this was different and started on a 
run. 

It made us feel queer to meet Boy Scouts out in 
the woods that way. Of course, it wasn’t strange. 
The queer part, I suppose, was for them to meet 
us so far from home. They were only about forty 
miles from Hyde Park. We found that they had 
come the day before on a Baltimore and Ohio train 
to Woodville, about a mile and a half from Wahob 


2o 6 The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 

Lake. They loaded their camping outfit on an elec¬ 
tric car and took the car themselves out to the lake. 
Their Scoutmaster told them that they would get 
walking enough after they were settled and they 
might as well take it easy when they had a chance. 

We went back with them to their camp. It was 
on a wooded bluff, north of the east end of the lake, 
a half mile or more from the interurban railway 
but not so far from a wagon road running east and 
west. There were a few little cottages at the west 
end of the lake, but where they were was wild, with 
no folks around. Between them and our camp was 
a tangle of bushes and ferns and woods, with little 
lakes in between—just the place to explore and track 
the enemy. 

“ I think that we’ll go on now,” said Mr. Norton, 
after we had talked a while. “ We must give you 
fellows a good chance to get thoroughly settled. We 
are glad that you are here. You boys will have a 
great time together and we will have a little friendly 
rivalry over our Scout stunts.” 

“ And a ball game,” said Bill. “ We are aching 
for a ball game and there will be just enough.” 


The Ravens Find a Rival Camp 207 

“ Betcher life,” said Skinny, “ we can beat you 
tracking. I’ll bet a million dollars that we can. We 
tracked a bear once, only it wasn’t a bear. It was 
a foolish feller with his boots on the wrong feet. 
It looked like a bear’s track, just the same.” 

“ We know where the best fish are,” said Chuck. 

“ And berries,” said Hank. 

“ And honey,” put in Harry. 

“ And places to swim,” added Wally. 

“ And places to hike,” said Dick. 

“ And girls,” I shouted, as we were leaving. I 
was going to say more, but Skinny nudged me to 
keep still. 

“ You bonehead,” said he, when we had gone on. 
“ There’s fish enough for everybody but only girls 
enough for our bunch.” 


CHAPTER XV 


THE CHALLENGE 

B ENNY saw it first. He was standing around 
outside the tent early next morning, waiting 
for us to come out for a swim. 

“ Hey, fellows, come here. Make it fast,” he 
called in such a surprised tone of voice that we 
tumbled out all at once. 

“ What’s the matter? ” we asked. 

For answer, he pointed to a tree near the eating 
tent. A big piece of paper was fastened to the 
bark. On the left side of the paper was a pic¬ 
ture of a rattlesnake, with its head up and its 
tongue sticking out; on the other side was some 
writing. 

We crowded around to read, wondering how it 
came there and what it all meant. This is what it 
said: 


208 


209 


The Challenge 

Challenge ! 

Camp Wahob, July 16. 
To Raven Patrol No. i, Troop 3, Mass. 

Patrol 4, Troop 1, Hyde Park, Chicago, having 
heard your patrol leader, known as Skinny, say that 
you could beat us tracking, do here, now and for¬ 
ever hurl the words back into your teeth, and we 
hereby challenge you to a Tracking Contest, to 
take place whenever you are ready and wherever 
you say. 

George W. Parker, 

Be Prepared Patrol Leader. 

Also 

Don’t Tread on Us. 

You could have knocked me down with a feather 
for a minute after reading that. Skinny read it 
twice. Then, pulling out his knife, he jammed the 
blade into the rattlesnake and left it there quivering. 
He turned around and faced us, with his arms 
folded like a bandit. Skinny couldn’t always re¬ 
member whether he was a bandit, an Indian, or a 
Scout. 

“ Fellers,” said he, “ you have read the message. 
The proud Scouts from the big city have spoken. 
What say the braves from Bob’s Hill?” 

Bill, being assistant patrol leader, was first to 


210 The Challenge 

answer. He jumped into the air and knocked his 
heels together three times before he came down; 
then gave our patrol cry, “ caw,” so loud that I 
wondered whether they wouldn’t hear it at the 
camp on Wahob Lake. Before the echo had died 
away, he walked up to the tree and stuck his knife 
into the rattlesnake. 

After that we all did the same, except that only 
Bill could click his heels together three times. Soon 
you hardly could see the snake, there were so many 
knives in it. When we had finished and stood 
waiting, Skinny pulled his hatchet out of his belt, 
whirled it around his head, and gave three caws. 

“ ’Tis well,” said he. “ We have spoken. Let 
be what is.” 

We talked it over with Mr. Norton at breakfast 
and it tickled him to have the Chicago boys come 
back at us so quickly. 

“ Those fellows are made of good stuff,” said he, 
and if you beat them you will have to do your 
best. What is your plan? I think that you ought 
to accept the challenge in as formal a way as it was 
sent.” 


211 


The Challenge 

“ We’ll nail the Sign to a tree under their very 
eyes,” cried Skinny. “ That will show them 
whether we can track or not.” 

“ Can you do it without their seeing you? ” 

“ Can we! Can we, fellers ? ” 

“ I can,” said Benny. “ I’m the littlest one 
in the bunch and maybe it will be harder to see 
me.” 

That is what we decided to do, but first we had 
to draw the Sign and write the message. 

When Benny was ready to start, he carried in his 
pocket a paper all ready to be tacked to a tree. 
There was a circle and in the center was a picture 
of a crow. Above the crow were the figures 14 
and below, 16, meaning to meet at two o’clock on 
the sixteenth day of the month, which was that very 
afternoon. At the right of the Sign were these 
words: 


Defi 

Camp Bob’s Hill, July 16. 
To Rattlesnake Patrol No. 4, Troop i, III. 

Patrol 1, Troop 3, Mass., accepts the Challenge 
and defies the Challengers. Tremble when you hear 


212 The Challenge 

the caw of the Raven. It will mean Business. 
More anon. 

Skinny Miller, 

Patrol Leader. 

“ What is that ‘ more anon ’ part ? ” Benny had 
asked. 

“ Never mind,” said Skinny, fiercely. “ That’s 
for them to find out.” 

Benny was starting on a run, but Skinny thought 
of something else before he had gone as far as the 
railroad track. 

“ Put it on the big tree in front of the middle 
tent,” he called, “ and mum’s the word.” 

It isn’t easy to steal up to a camp in daytime 
without being seen. We didn’t believe that Benny 
could do it, but we knew that he would do it if 
anybody could, even if he had to wait around all 
day. 

We did up all the work while we were waiting, 
and Mr. Norton and Dick took one of the boats and 
went fishing, hoping to catch enough fish for dinner. 
Still, Benny didn’t come. 

“ He ought to have done it in an hour,” com- 


The Challenge 213 

plained Skinny, looking at his watch, “ half an 
hour to go and half an hour to come back; and it’s 
all of two hours since he started.” 

“ He’s probably waiting for a good chance,” I 
told him. 

“ Maybe the guys have caught him and tied him 
up,” said Bill. 

We hadn’t thought of that before, but we saw 
in a minute what had happened. Skinny began to 
look around for his rope. 

“ Keep your eyes peeled, fellers,” said he. “ They 
will be sending somebody over here with a message, 
if they have caught Benny. We won’t do a thing 
to him. Oh, no. Maybe not.” 

But although we watched in every direction we 
could see no signs of anybody, except Mr. Norton 
and Dick, fishing, and some more fishing boats down 
near the south end of the lake. 

“ Great snakes! ” said Bill. “ Come on. Betcher 
life Benny wouldn’t be standing around, waiting, if 
anything had happened to us.” 

“ We don’t know that anything has happened to 


214 The Challenge 

him,” I told him, “ and if there hasn’t we might 
spoil it all.” 

“ That’s so,” said Skinny. “ We’ll give him half 
an hour more, then if he doesn’t come, we’ll start. 
We can take the field glass and look across from 
the west bluff without their seeing us.” 

“ We can’t see inside their tents. That is where 
they’ll have him.” 

“ It will be worth trying, anyhow. But we will 
want Dick with us; we might need him.” 

“ Oh, Dick,” he called. “ Come on in. We’re 
going somewhere.” 

Dick didn’t say a word for a minue; he was too 
busy. I saw him stiffen, grab his pole in both 
hands, and in another moment he had swung a fish 
into the boat. 

“ Nothin’ doin’,” he shouted. “ They’re just be¬ 
ginning to bite.” 

We waited, half an hour; then, when there 
were no signs of Benny, we started, going down 
the railroad track as far as Wahob Lake and creep¬ 
ing up the bluff among the trees. 

Skinny lay down on the ground and wriggled his 


The Challenge 215 

way out into the open; then took out the glass and 
looked across. Without a glass, we could see a 
bunch of the other Scouts, but couldn’t tell what 
they were doing. It looked as if they might have 
Benny surrounded. 

Just then Skinny motioned for us to come. We 
all threw ourselves flat and crawled out to where 
he lay, watching. 

“ He’s done it,” he told us. “ Benny’s the stuff, 
every time. Take a look.” 

He handed me the glass. In front of the middle 
tent was a tree and around that tree I could see a 
bunch of excited boys, looking at a paper that was 
fastened to the bark. 

We crawled back into the shadows to talk it over. 
Skinny was sure that Benny was all right, for if 
they had caught him they would have been stand¬ 
ing around him, instead of around the message. 

“ They may have him in a tent,” said Bill. 

“ But he tacked up the message.” 

“ That’s nothing. They may have caught him 
after he tacked it up.” 

“ What, Benny? Not in a thousand years.” 


2l6 


The Challenge 

“ Anyhow, I’m going to signal. If he’s in the 
tent he couldn’t see smoke, but he can hear and 
he can answer.” 

“ Caw!” 

The signal floated out over the lake, while we 
listened with all our might. We didn’t hear any¬ 
thing that sounded like a crow. 

“ Once more,” Skinny told him. 

“ Caw! caw! ” 

Then as we listened, we heard, faint, as if Benny 
was a long way off, 

“ Caw, caw-caw.” 

But the sound came from far over to the west of 
the track and not from across the lake. 

“ It’s Benny, all right,” said Bill. “ Come on.” 

We started back toward camp down the track, 
cawing as we went and with Benny getting nearer 
all the time, and pretty soon he came in sight. 

“ I did it,” he shouted. “ They pretty near 
caught me, but I did it.” 

We crowded around, patting him on the back 
and shaking his hand until he was the happiest 
fellow you ever saw. 


The Challenge 217 

“ Benny Wade,” said Skinny, “ you are a lot 
younger than the rest of us, a year, anyhow, and 
you are smaller, but you are always there with the 
goods every time the bell rings. Ain’t he, fellers ? ” 

“ Betcher life,” said Bill. “ Come on, one of you 
guys. Make a chair.” 

Skinny jumped forward with his right hand 
clasped around his left wrist. Bill did the same. 
Then each of them grasped the other’s right wrist 
with his left hand, making a chair. Two of us 
grabbed Benny, who was trying to get away, and 
sat him down in the chair. Skinny and Bill then 
started toward camp with him, while Benny steadied 
himself by throwing his arms around their necks. 
That is the way Scouts are taught to carry anyone 
who is hurt. 

When we came in sight of the camp, we saw that 
Mr. Norton and Dick had come in from the lake 
and were watching for us, not knowing where we 
had gone. Mr. Norton caught sight of us first, and 
when he saw two of us carrying Benny, I thought 
that he would have a fit. He was over the fence 
before we could get anywhere near it. 


2i8 The Challenge 

“What is the matter?” he called. “Are you 
much hurt, Benny?” 

For answer, Benny jumped down and turned a 
couple of handsprings. When he had stopped and 
sat there on the grass, laughing, the rest of us gave 
an Indian dance around him, Skinny waving his 
hatchet and making up a lot of Indian words, while 
Mr. Norton looked on, wondering. He was as 
tickled as we were when he heard what had hap¬ 
pened. 

“ Now,” said he, when we had thrown ourselves 
down on the grass, in the shade of the big tree at 
our camp, “ if Benjamin will tell us all about it, we’ll 
be glad to listen.” 

“ It wasn’t anything much,” Benny told him. “ I 
started down the track, intending to cross over on 
the Wahob Lake road and come in back of the tents ; 
then I happened to think that they could see a part 
of the road from the camp. So I crossed over 
between Long Lake and Canada Lake, to come in 
on the far side of Wahob. It’s so wild in there 
that, before I knew it, I didn’t know which way I 
was going, or where I was, and I wandered around 


The Challenge 219 

there quite a while. Finally, I heard the whistle of 
an interurban car and got my bearings from 
that.” 

“ Why didn’t you use your watch for a com¬ 
pass ? ” Skinny asked. “ Point the hour hand at 
the sun and halfway between that and noon would 
have been south.” 

“ I didn’t have it with me. When I came close 
to the camp I had to go slow and crawl through 
the bushes. I made my way around after a long 
time until I was back of the tents and lay there 
in the bushes, listening. I couldn’t see anybody and 
didn’t know where they were. I could hear the fel¬ 
lows talking out in front and didn’t dare go any 
nearer.” 

“ Great snakes, Benny! ” said Bill, “ how did you 
ever do it ? ” 

“ I didn’t know what to do at first, for I knew 
that if I went around the tents on either side they 
couldn’t help seeing me. Then I thought of some¬ 
thing. The tree that Skinny told about is right in 
front of the entrance to the middle tent. If I could 
get into the tent, I thought, I could watch and do 


220 The Challenge 

it when they were not looking. But I was afraid 
somebody might be in the tent. 

“ Finally I crawled up close behind the tent and 
listened. I couldn’t hear a sound inside; then I 
lifted up the canvas at the bottom and peeked in, all 
ready to run if there should be anybody inside. The 
tent was empty, so I crawled in.” 

“ I don’t know whether breaking into a tent could 
be classed as burglary or not,” said Mr. Norton, 
“but go on.” 

“ I had waited there quite a while, when I heard 
somebody say, ‘ It’s in the tent, fellows. Wait a 
minute and I will get it.’ ” 

“ Great snakes! ” yelled Bill, and I heard Skinny 
say “ Gee-whilikins! ” sort of under his breath. 

“ That was what I thought. I just had time to 
crawl under some blankets in one corner and lie 
flat, hardly daring to breathe, when he came in. 
Say, I was scared stiff, all right. He looked all 
around for something and I thought every minute 
he would lift the blankets and find me. When he 
went out, a bunch of them stood right in the en¬ 
trance, or in front of it, talking. That was one of 


221 


The Challenge 

the things which made me gone so long. I thought 
I never should get out of that tent. They were 
talking about us. 

“ ‘ Did you fasten it up good and tight ? ’ one 
of them said. 

“' You bet I did,’ said somebody else. ‘ They 
couldn’t have helped seeing it the minute they came 
out of their tents.’ 

“ ‘ I guess it surprised them some. We will hear 
from them some time to-day. We’d better have 
some guards; they may be sending us some mes¬ 
sage.’ ” 

We all gave a shout at that. Bill was so tickled 
that he stood on his hands until his knife, four 
cents, and two fishhooks dropped out of his pocket. 

“ You needn’t believe me if you don’t want to,” 
Benny went on, “ but I hardly could keep from 
cawing. After a while they went farther away. 
Then I watched my chance, slipped out back of the 
tree, fastened up the paper, and then into the tent 
again. 

“ It only took a few seconds, but I hadn’t much 
more than crawled out at the back of the tent when 


222 The Challenge 

they found it. Say, you never saw such a surprised 

bunch. 

“ ‘ That wasn’t there two minutes ago,’ I heard 
one of them say. ‘The guy can’t be far away. 
After him, fellows. Scatter and look for his trail. 
We’ll show ’em a thing or two.’ 

“ I was out of sight, running through the bushes, 
stooping low and not making any more noise than 
I could help, and circling around to get into the 
brush south of the lake. In a minute they found my 
tracks; the ground is soft there in the woods and 
away I went with the whole pack after me. I knew 
that I never could get away unless I could fool 
them, so I made a bee-line for Round Lake and, 
believe me, I didn’t stop to eat any blackberries. 
I jumped in and swam across, crawled out, letting 
my footprints show plain; then slipped back into 
the water without leaving a sign. I swam back and 
just had time to hide in some bushes when they all 
came down to the edge of the lake. They didn’t 
jump in, but divided, part going around one way 
and part the other. It is only a little way around 
and in a few minutes I heard a yell and knew that 


The Challenge 223 

they had found my tracks on the other side. Then 
I slipped along through the brush, crossed back of 
their camp again, and made my way northwest to 
Mineral Springs. I was circling around toward 
camp when I heard somebody caw. You know the 
rest. Say, I am tired.” 

When he had finished Skinny got up, with his 
eyes shining. 

“ What is the matter with Benny Wade ? ” he 
shouted. 

“ He’s all right,” we yelled back. 

Then Bill took it up. “ Who’s all right?” 

“ Benny Wade! ” we yelled again, and Mr. Nor¬ 
ton yelled as loud as anybody. 

“ I guess Benny has earned a rest until dinner 
time,” said he. “ After dinner we will go over and 
take up that challenge.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE GREAT TRACKING CONTEST 

J UST before two o’clock we started for Camp 
Wahob, carrying our patrol banner and keep¬ 
ing step to a drum which Bill had made from the 
head of a barrel hung around his neck. 

“ Do you think it safe to go over there after 
what Benny did to them?” asked Mr. Norton. 
“ Maybe we’d better send an envoy forward to let 
them know that we have come with peaceful inten¬ 
tions. Captain Miller, will you detail one of your 
men for the work?” 

“ Dick, you do it,” said Skinny. “ Tie your hand¬ 
kerchief to the end of a stick.” 

“ Why not use the Indian sign?” Mr. Norton 
told him. “ Whenever an Indian holds up a branch 
of a tree it means ‘ I want to make peace.’ ” 

As soon as we had cut a branch Dick started, fol¬ 
lowing the edge of the lake around, while we waited 


224 


The Great Tracking Contest 225 

for him at the west end. They saw him coming 
and sent one of the Rattlesnakes to meet him. We 
watched them shake hands and say something; then 
Dick came hurrying back. 

“ They are all ready/’ he said, “ and they say 
that when it comes to tracking they will show us a 
thing or two.” 

“ Fall in line,” yelled Skinny. “ Forward, march. 
Maybe they will and then again, maybe they won’t.” 

In a few minutes we reached the camp and were 
talking over the tracking stunt with the boys. We 
decided to have each patrol choose one member who 
should make the trail for the other patrol to follow. 

The Rattlesnakes chose their patrol leader, 
George Parker. 

“ Who is our choice, fellows ? ” asked Mr. 
Norton. 

“ Bill,” we all yelled at once. When it comes to 
running and jumping Bill can beat us all. Skinny 
is best at tracking and we needed him to follow 
the trail. 

“ How about it, Bill?” 

“ I’ll do it, if you want me to, and if they catch 


226 The Great Tracking Contest 

me they will be good ones. But it is going to be 
hard work to keep still so long.” 

“ Our plan is this,” said Mr. Norton, after talking 
it over with the other Scoutmaster. “ Bill will go 
south from the camp and George, north, for a run 
of one hour. Each lad will leave a trail of paper, 
dropping pieces occasionally, so that the trail may 
not be entirely lost. The Hyde Park patrol will 
follow Bill and the Bob’s Hill boys will try to catch 
George. One of our fellows will go with the Hyde 
Park patrol and one of them with us, to act as 
judges. The two trailmakers will start at four 
o’clock and will show up here again, either uncap¬ 
tured or as prisoners, at five o’clock. Every time 
the hunters see or hear the trailmaker, they must 
call out his name and it will count as a point in favor 
of their side. The game, of course, will be to cap¬ 
ture him. How much start shall we give the trail- 
makers? ” 

“ Ten minutes,” somebody said. 

“ Great snakes! ” said Bill. “ I’ll be halfway 
to Valparaiso in ten minutes.” 

“ Make it three,” said Mr. Shepard, the Chicago 


The Great Tracking Contest 227 

Scoutmaster. “ I’ve been looking around a bit and 
it is so wild here that in three minutes the boys can 
get out of sight. We must not make it too hard 
the first time.” 

“ What will the Scoutmasters do while we are 
gone ? ” I asked them. 

“ We’ll be very busy lying around in the shade,” 
laughed Mr. Shepard, “ but we shall exert ourselves 
enough to have supper ready for a lot of hungry 
Scouts soon after you get back.” 

That sounded good to Raven Patrol and the 
Scouts of Rattlesnake Patrol were so tickled that 
they set up a great rattling, shaking small gourds 
with shot inside. That was their patrol signal, the 
noise of a rattlesnake. 

“ Now, fellows,” said George, their patrol leader, 
“ we have nearly an hour to get ready in. What’s 
the matter with going in swimming? ” 

We came out feeling fresh and cool and ready 
for anything. At about one minute to four the 
two Scoutmasters shut each patrol in a separate 
tent, all except Bill and George, who filled their 
pockets with little pieces of paper, which had been 


228 The Great Tracking Contest 

torn from newspapers, and stood ready to start at 
the signal. I was put in with the Rattlesnakes as 
judge for our side. 

“Go!” yelled Mr. Norton. 

I heard somebody pass the tent with a crash and 
knew that it was George trying to get into Dilling¬ 
ham’s Dells before the three minutes were up. Once 
there, among the ravines and in the woods, it would 
be easy to give us the slip. Bill had started in the 
opposite direction and we couldn’t hear him at all, 
except one loud caw at the start. There was an 
answer from the other tent; then all was still, ex¬ 
cept the ticking of the watches which some of 
the Chicago boys were holding. In just three min¬ 
utes the tent was opened and we hurried out. 

“ Everybody scatter and look for signs,” yelled 
Skinny. 

I didn’t have any time to watch what the Ravens 
were doing. The Rattlesnakes were making for the 
wild country, south of the lake, and it hustled me 
to keep up. 

It was easy at the start. Wahob Lake curves 
around toward the northeast sort of like the new 


The Great Tracking Contest 229 
moon, with marshy ground to the east. South of 
the horn of the moon were other swamps and a 
little pond, called Round Lake, the one Benny had 
swum across when he was getting away, after put¬ 
ting up the message. Between the east end of the 
lake and the swamps farther east there was a narrow 
strip of ground, soft but not wet. Bill might have 
gone to either side and worked his way around 
toward the south, but I knew that he would go 
straight across and in among the bushes. The Rat¬ 
tlesnakes knew it, too, and they hurried after him 
without losing a second, looking for the trail. 

But when we reached the other side it was dif¬ 
ferent. We could see one footprint where Bill had 
tried to jump across a large, soft place and had 
landed on the farther edge, and that was all we 
could see except a tangle of almost everything that 
grows, with now and then a grass-covered spot in 
between. 

The boys went down on their hands and knees 
and crawled out from the center like spokes from 
the hub of a wheel, looking for paper and ether 
signs, but not a thing could they find at first. Then, 


230 The Great Tracking Contest 

after a little, we heard a shout from Phil Evans, 
the assistant patrol leader of the Rattlesnakes. We 
all ran over to where he was standing; he pointed 
to some blackberry bushes, full of big berries which 
were getting ripe and tempting. 

“ We’ll pick them for supper when we get back,” 
said one of the boys. “ We haven’t time now.” 

“ Pick nothin’! Where are your eyes ? Look 
there.” 

There were a lot of dried hulls on the bushes 
where somebody had been picking the day before 
and in the middle was a big one, sticking up white 
and fresh and still moist, showing that someone had 
picked a large, fat berry not many minutes before. 

I knew that Bill had done it; he likes blackberries. 
He only had taken one, but that one was enough to 
put those Chicago boys on the trail. After that 
they began to find pieces of paper; then a broken 
twig and a place where someone had crashed 
through a thicket of bushes. The trail led in a 
zigzag way toward Round Lake. 

At the lake we lost it. As we came up a big mud 
turtle slid from a log where he had been sunning 


The Great Tracking Contest 231 

himself and dropped into the water with a little 
splash. 

“ Don’t waste any time here, fellows,” said Phil. 
“ Nobody has been around here for ten or fifteen 
minutes, anyhow, or that turtle would not have 
been there.” 

After a little search they found the trail again, 
where Bill had doubled back toward Wahob, then 
crept through the hazel brush in a wide circle and 
stopped to eat some more blackberries. After that 
it was lost for a few minutes and, when looking 
for it, we came to two cow paths through a swampy 
place, branching off in different directions. 

Right in the middle of one of the paths Bill had 
drawn a big X, which is an Indian sign, meaning, 
“ This path not to be followed.” Under the cross 
he had drawn a crow, although he had been in such 
a hurry it didn’t look much like one. 

“ We’ve got him,” yelled Phil. “ He can’t fool 
us that way. Come on, fellows.” 

He dashed down the path that Bill had told us 
not to follow, with the patrol at his heels. It 
wound over toward the east and soon there wasn’t 


232 The Great Tracking Contest 

any path at all, only swamp, with no trail and no 
sign of Bill. 

“ He must have taken the other one/’ one of the 
boys said. And they hurried back to the sign. 

Bill had fooled them, all right. He had made up 
his mind that if he told them the path not to take 
they would be sure to take it. I’ve noticed that it 
often happens that way. If you tell the truth folks 
will not believe you. 

When they struck the trail again on the other 
side of the swamp they had lost several minutes. 
They lost the trail a dozen times, but always found 
it again, until I thought that every minute we 
should hear or see Bill somewhere. He told me 
afterwards that we passed him once where he lay 
in a thicket, waiting for a chance to get away. 

Then suddenly we crossed a lane, fenced in and 
leading down through the woods. On looking down 
the lane I saw Bill, running along by the fence, 
trying to find an easy place to get through. The 
Rattlesnakes saw him at the same time. 

“ Bill, Bill! ” they yelled. 

Bill heard them and looked back. He shook his 


The Great Tracking Contest 233 

fist at them, gave one fierce caw, slipped through 
the fence, and was gone. 

“ You chump! ” I shouted, for I couldn’t help it, 
even if I was judge. “ That gives them two points. 
Why couldn’t you keep your mouth shut ? ” 

Phil grinned. “ We’ve got him this time,” he 
said. “ We don’t need any trail.” 

But they did, just the same, for a minute later 
they came to two more paths branching off like the 
others. Bill didn’t have any time to spare, but he 
had stopped long enough to put two stones in the 
middle of one of the paths, a small one on top of a 
larger one. 

It was an Indian sign, meaning, “ This is the 
trail,” and was the one Bill used on his way to 
Greylock that time when he sprained his ankle on 
the mountain and was lost for two days before we 
saw his smoke signals and found him. 

“ You are crazy,” I said to myself. “ You never 
can fool ’em twice in the same way.” Phil was 
thinking the same thing. 

“ Half go one way and half the other,” he called. 
“ We’ll take no chances this time.” 


234 The Great Tracking Contest 

That is what they did, but there was no sign of 
Bill. We found that he hadn’t taken either path, 
but had crawled through some bushes to one side 
until he had entered the woods again and was out 
of sight; then he had made a run for it. We could 
follow his track easily, after we found it, for he 
hadn’t tried to hide it, and we could see his 
footprints in the soft ground in the woods. I 
could tell by looking at them that he had been 
running. 

I knew in a minute what he was up to. He was 
running for Long Lake, trying to get far enough 
ahead to give him time to swim across. Then he 
would make his way down on the west side of the 
lake and back to Camp Wahob. 

The Rattlesnakes didn’t know that the lake was 
so near, but they hurried along so fast I knew 
that Bill would not have time to get across. Bill 
is a good swimmer, but we were coming out on 
the lake at the widest part, and it takes time to swim 
across, no matter how good a swimmer you are. 
Not many would dare try it. 

“ They can’t catch him,” I thought, “ but they will 


The Great Tracking Contest 235 

see him, and that will mean another point against 
us.” 

The tracks took us straight through the woods 
and down to the water’s edge, just as I had expected. 
I even could see where Bill had waded in with a 
rush and I looked out over the water, thinking to 
see his head bobbing along halfway across. 

There wasn’t a sign of anything on the lake, not 
even a boat. But coming in toward shore, in widen¬ 
ing circles, were little waves, showing that some¬ 
thing had been out there and only a moment before 
had sunk into the water out of sight. 

It scared me. It seemed as if I could see Bill, 
lying at the bottom of the lake, gasping for breath 
and swallowing water instead of air. It was awful 
and made me feel faint and sick. 

“ He’s had a cramp,” I moaned, pointing to the 
circling wave coming toward shore. “ He’s the best 
swimmer in the whole patrol, but he was too hot 
to go in and now he is drowned.” 

We all stood there, thinking the same thing. Phil 
looked into my face once to see whether I was trying 
to fool them, but he could tell that I was frightened. 


236 The Great Tracking Contest 

I hardly could stand for a minute when I thought 
of the terrible thing that had happened. 

“ We’ll save him if we can,” said Phil. 

Then he turned to the other Rattlesnakes. 
“Numbers 3 and 4, you are the best divers; come 
with me. We’ll find a boat somewhere along the 
shore. The rest of you watch to see if he comes 
up. If he does, go after him, and get him, too.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE RAVENS MAKE GOOD THEIR “ DEFI ” 

I T seemed like an age that we stood there, sick 
at heart, watching for Bill to come up and 
waiting for the boat. The wave broke upon the 
shore in little ripples that left the lake like a looking- 
glass, showing the sky and passing clouds but no 
signs of a swimmer struggling with cramp. 

I suppose that it was not more than two minutes, 
or three, but I didn’t know it. I was almost crazy. 
Bill’s mother had not wanted him to go. He teased 
so hard that she gave in, but she took me to one 
side before we started. 

“ John/’ she said, “ you may be just as harum- 
scarum as these other boys, but it seems to me that 
you are a little less reckless. I know that you are 
not so reckless as Willie and I won’t let him go 
a step unless you promise to watch over him and 

keep him out of mischief.” 

237 


238 Ravens Make Good Their “ Defi ” 

I promised. I had to; there was nothing else to 
do. But all the time I knew that Ma was hoping 
that Bill, or somebody else, would keep me out of 
trouble. 

“ Nothing is going to happen to him,” I told 
her. “ Mr. Norton will be along and he will keep 
us all straight. Besides, Bill isn’t as reckless as he 
used to be. Getting lost on Greylock and spraining 
his ankle was a good lesson to him.” 

Now he was drowning out there in the lake, some¬ 
where. I couldn’t stand it any longer. 

“ Pick me up with the boat,” I told the boys. “ I 
can’t swim across.” 

Kicking off my shoes, I plunged in, swimming as 
I never had swum before. I hadn’t gone more than 
a hundred feet when I heard Phil give a shout. 

“ Come back, Pedro,” he yelled. " Here’s Bill’s 
tracks coming up out of the water.” 

I turned and swam back again as fast as I could 
to where the whole patrol were standing on the 
shore. 

“ You will have to catch up,” they shouted. “ We 
can’t wait.” 


Ravens Make Good Their “ Defi ” 239 

They started off with a rush, and a minute or two 
later I started after them. I could see as plain as 
day where Bill had walked up out of the water. 
He had fooled us all by swimming out into the lake, 
then north along the shore, and out again. There 
was no telling how far he had gone, for the Rattle¬ 
snakes had lost many precious minutes. 

“ I didn’t mean to fool you, Phil; honest,” I 
said, after I had caught up with them. “ I thought 
that he was a goner.” 

“ I know that you didn’t,” he told me. “ We 
were all fooled. Bill is a Jim-dandy and no mis¬ 
take.” 

All this time we were hurrying on as fast as we 
could follow the trail, until, down below, it led us into 
the lake again at a place where it narrows down like 
a river opposite Camp Bob’s Hill. This time the 
Rattlesnakes looked up and down the shore for 
tracks, but Bill had crossed and there was nothing 
for us to do but swim across after him. 

We struck the trail on the other side, but we 
didn’t see Bill until we found him at five o’clock 
talking with Mr. Norton and Mr. Shepard at Camp 


240 Ravens Make Good Their “ Defi ” 

Wahob, tired but happy. He had been the first 
one back. 

He wasn’t far ahead of the others. In less than 
a minute, we found out afterwards, he caught sight 
of George, the Hyde Park trailmaker, coming down 
the road toward camp on a run and after him, not 
far behind, ran the Ravens. There was no need 
for a trail, for George was in sight all the time. If 
the camp had been farther away they would have 
caught him. 

“Whew! That was some run!” he exclaimed, 
mopping his forehead, as he threw himself down 
on the grass. 

“ How did you let them get so close? ” asked Mr. 
Shepard. 

“ I couldn’t help it. They knew all the short 
cuts.” 

They didn’t have time to say any more just then, 
for Skinny and the other Ravens came puffing up 
and they could see the Rattlesnakes hurrying around 
the end of the lake. 

“ Caw! ” yelled the Ravens, when they saw the 
Hyde Park Scouts running toward camp. 


241 


Ravens Make Good Their “ Defi ” 

“ Rattle, rattle,” went the Rattlesnakes. 

I kept still. I couldn’t rattle because it is against 
Scout rules to use another patrol’s signal; besides, I 
didn’t have anything to do it with, and it didn’t 
seem polite to caw. I was all out of breath, any¬ 
how. 

“ Right on time,” said Mr. Shepard, as we came 
up. “ That is what I call good work. You seem 
sort of wet.” 

“ Bill fell in the lake,” said Phil, winking at me, 
“ and we had to go in after him.” 

“ I noticed that he was wet. My advice is for 
you all to take a good rub-down before supper. Put 
your clothes out in the sun; it is still hot enough 
to dry them in a few minutes.” 

“ Pm ’most dry now,” Bill told him, “ but the 
rub-down will be all right.” 

“ Well, John,” said Mr. Norton, when we had 
come out of the tents, “ what sort of trackers did 
you find these city chaps to be ? ” 

“ They are great,” I told him. “ I didn’t think 
that they would come within gunshot of Bill, but 
he had to hide to keep away from them. They saw 


242 Ravens Make Good Their “ Defi ” 

him once and the bonehead had to stop and yell. 
That counted two points against us.” 

“ Nobody at home! ” groaned Skinny. 

“ Well, a fellow has to yell once in a while, or 
bust,” said Bill. 

“ And how about the Ravens ? ” asked Mr. 
Shepard of the Scout who had gone with them as 
judge. 

“ They are wonders,” said he. “ They seemed 
to know just what George would do next every 
time. We got near enough to hear him several 
times and we saw him twice before that last sprint 
down the road. He was in sight all of the way 
then.” 

“ I couldn’t help it,” George said. “ It was supper 
time. Besides, I knew that if I didn’t run like sixty 
they would catch me.” 

“ You have all earned your suppers,” Mr. Shepard 
told us. “ So draw up and get busy. Mr. Norton 
and I will do the honors. After supper you can 
have all the time you need to tell how it happened.” 

Bill told first about making the trail and Phil 
told about tracking him. It tickled the Ravens when 


Ravens Make Good Their “ Defi ” 243 

they heard how we were afraid that Bill had been 
drowned, when he hadn’t thought of such a thing. 

“ You couldn’t drown Bill if you tried,” said 
Hank. 

Then Skinny told about tracking George, and 
George started to tell how he had kept away from 
them. 

“ Wait! ” said Skinny. Then he turned to me. 
“ The secretary will put it in the minutes of the 
meetin’.” 

I am going to put it in just as if I had seen it 
myself, which I couldn’t have done, of course, for 
I was with the other bunch. 

When Mr. Norton shouted “ Go! ” George made 
a grand rush, in order to get away as far as he 
could before the three minutes were up. 

“ I was sure that it wouldn’t be easy,” he said, 
“ because the Ravens knew the ground better than 
we did. Besides, they were brought up in the coun¬ 
try, while we live in a big city. If you’d start to 
do any tracking in Chicago, the cops would get after 
you.” 

In order that you may know just where George 


244 Ravens Make Good Their “ Defi ” 

made the trail I’ll have to tell about the country 
north of Wahob Lake. The land is very rough 
there. Some of the farms look like the farms in 
Massachusetts, with sloping fields and sort of hilly 
in places. The old glacier, which Mr. Norton told 
us about, did it. The Valparaiso-Chesterton wagon 
road, which runs north and south some distance 
to the east of Wahob Lake, was laid out along the 
top of a ridge. That ridge is a watershed between 
the waters of the Mississippi and St. Lawrence 
Rivers. 

This rough country extends all the way from 
Flint Lake to Woodville, about a mile and a half 
or two miles north of Wahob. A great deal of it is 
covered with woods and a little north of Wahob a 
half-dozen or more pretty ravines wind through the 
woods sort of east and west. These are called 
Dillingham’s Dells. The electric railroad cuts these 
dells in the middle, crossing on great fills which 
kind of spoil them, although I suppose that the rail¬ 
road folks couldn’t help it. 

North of the dells come the sloping farms that 
I told about; then more woods. The hill, which 


Ravens Make Good Their “ Defi ” 245 

they call Mt. Moriah, is there, west of the track. 
Then come Mineral Springs and, beyond the 
springs, Vincent’s woods reach almost to Woodville. 

The Ravens knew all about that country, just as 
George had said. We had tramped through it many 
times. Mr. Norton liked to take us to Vincent’s 
woods; there are so many kinds of trees there. He 
made us study them, so that we would know what 
they were, wherever we might see them, and know 
the shape of their leaves and the look of their 
bark. 

George led the Ravens a chase through that coun¬ 
try. They saw him once or twice and got near 
enough to hear him several times, in among the 
dells. George finally circled around to the south 
and back through Anderson’s gully, where we had 
the trouble with the bull. Skinny was sure that 
they would find George up a tree, but Mr. Anderson 
had Calamity tied up. 

When the stories had been finished, Mr. Shepard 
spoke up. 

“We thought that we were pretty good at track¬ 
ing,” he said, “ but we will have to admit that the 


246 Ravens Make Good Their “ Defi ” 

Ravens had a little the best of us. How about it, 
fellows ? ” 

“ They did and no mistake,” George told him, 
“ but we’ll try it again after we have been here 
longer and then, maybe, it will be a different story.” 

That night we had a big campfire on the beach 
and Mr. Norton and Mr. Shepard told us stories. 

“ I’ll tell you what is in my mind,” said Mr. Nor¬ 
ton, as we were getting ready to go back to Camp 
Bob’s Hill. “ We Massachusetts fellows haven’t 
many more days to stay here, and before we go I 
want to take my boys over to Gary and through the 
great steel mills which have grown up there like 
magic. This is an age of steel and steel enters into 
the construction of so many things that I think 
every boy ought to know how it is made. Will the 
Rattlesnakes go with us? ” 

There was great rattling for a minute. 

“ I have had the same thing in mind,” said Mr. 
Shepard, “ and we shall be very glad to go.” 

“ Very well. I already have asked for a permit 
and as soon as it comes we will go over.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


BOILING A RAILROAD 

4 FTER supper the next evening, when the sun 
l \ had gone down and a cool breeze from Lake 
Michigan had driven away the heat of the day, we 
hiked down the railroad track to the north end of 
Long Lake and crossed over between Long and 
Canada Lakes to the Valparaiso-Chesterton high¬ 
way. Then we followed the highway until we came 
to Vincent’s farm, east of Mineral Springs. This 
is one of the hilly farms I have told about. 

From the top of the slope we could look west 
and see a flame, leaping up in the distance, and 
the light of other fires. The clouds above were 
crimson, like when some farmhouse is burning at 
night and all you can see is the reflection on the sky. 

“ Great snakes! ” shouted Bill. “ There is a fire 
somewhere. Come on.” 

“ That fire is sixteen miles away,” Mr. Norton 


247 


248 Boiling a Railroad 

told us, “ a little too far for us to walk to-night. 
What you see are the fires of the steel mills in 
Gary.” 

“ Are they burning up ? ” 

“ Not a bit of it. That big flame shooting into 
the air is burning gas at the coke ovens. In making 
coke they release more gas than they can use and 
set fire to it to get rid of it. Enough gas is being 
wasted there to light a large city. The other fires 
which you see are from the blast furnaces, where 
they are smelting iron ore. 

“ I have brought you here to-night to tell you 
something about those great mills over there, which 
we will visit in a day or two. Instead of our usual 
campfire, we will find seats on the grass where we 
can watch those fires of Gary and talk. You will 
enjoy your trip more and learn more if you first 
find out something about what you are going to 
see. What is the most useful metal, Skinny?” 

“ Gold,” said Skinny, right off the bat. “ We 
found a lot of gold pieces once where a hermit had 
buried them, part way up Greylock, near the Bel¬ 
lows Pipe. That was before we knew you. We 


Boiling a Railroad 249 

took one of them to a drug store afterward and 
got all kinds of soda water.” 

“ That was being useful and no mistake.” 

“ Yep—we came near getting run in for it. You 
see, the soda water man thought that we had stolen 
the money, but we wouldn’t do such a thing. You 
bet it surprised him some. He had to go out and 
get the change; didn’t have enough in his store. 
We paralyzed him, all right.” 

“ Gold is a good thing to have, particularly in 
the soda water season. However, we could get 
along without it, and use something else for money, 
if we had to. But there is one metal which we use 
and need every day of our lives and almost every 
minute in the day. Without it we should be living 
like savages and would have to do without much 
that makes life worth living.” 

“ Guess what,” said Benny. “ It’s iron.” 

“ That’s right, iron and steel, and it is a good 
thing to learn something about a metal like that. 
There was a time when the world didn’t know any¬ 
thing about iron. It isn’t found in a natural state, 
like some metals, but it combines with other things. 


250 Boiling a Railroad 

It is dug out of the ground like so much dirt, or 
rock, and does not look anything like iron. On 
that account, probably, it took a long time to find 
out about it. When at last the world learned what 
it was and how to use it, the event was epoch- 
making and ushered in what we call the iron age. 
It would be hard now for us to imagine a world 
without iron, although in what we call the stone 
age the savage people knew nothing of iron.” 

“ We are getting along in camp without much 
iron,” Benny told him, “ except, of course, our cook¬ 
ing things.” 

“ It seems to me that is quite an important excep¬ 
tion. I’d like to try an experiment, if you do not 
mind. Here is Bill, who is very much of a boy 
from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. 
I am curious to see how much iron there is about 
him—iron and steel. Come, Bill, turn out your 
pockets. Let us see what is in them.” 

Bill spread his handkerchief on the grass and 
began to pull things out of his pockets, Mr. Norton 
keeping count. When he had finished, this is what 
we found: a cork with four fish hooks stuck in it, 


Boiling a Railroad 251 

a horseshoe nail, a piece of wire, a three-bladed 
knife, an old key, a dollar watch with steel springs, 
and an iron ring which he was wearing to keep off 
rheumatism. 

“ I don’t see any gold,” said Mr. Norton, “ but 
you will notice how important iron is to boys. In 
addition to his interesting collection, Bill seems to 
have considerable iron in his constitution.” 

“ Guess what,” said Benny. “ ’Tain’t iron; it’s 
sand.” 

“ There is a great deal of iron in the earth, al¬ 
though only in certain places is there enough to 
make mining pay. I suppose that you have noticed 
how the stones are streaked with reddish-brown 
down there at Mineral Springs. The stain was 
caused by iron in the water. The peculiar taste of 
the water is partly due to iron. The iron ore used 
in Gary comes from mines up near Lake Superior. 
In some places the ore is so near the surface that 
it can be dug up with great steam shovels very rap¬ 
idly and cheaply. In others, it is farther under 
ground. The ore is loaded on to dump cars which 
are pretty much iron,—a train load at a time,—and 


252 Boiling a Railroad 

hauled by an iron locomotive on a steel track to the 
lake shore, where it is dumped into huge chutes, 
probably made of iron. Then immense steel boats 
go up under the chutes and the ore is dropped into 
them, nine thousand tons in a boat and sometimes 
more. It takes only a few hours and costs almost 
nothing to load a steamer in that way. Then the 
boat starts for Gary and arrives there in about three 
days. When we go over we shall see the wonderful 
unloading machines, almost human, dipping down 
into some ore steamer and lifting out its cargo of 
ore. 

“ This ore is not a mixture of iron and other 
things, as you would mix ashes and garden soil, 
for example. It is what is called a chemical com¬ 
bination that changes it into something else. Let 
Bill leave his knife out in the rain, or dew, and he 
will find out what I mean. A reddish-brown sub¬ 
stance will form on the blade.” 

“ Rust,” said Bill. 

“ That is what we would call it, and it wouldn’t 
look much like the polished steel blade that Bill 
is so proud of, but, just the same, rust is a chemical 


Boiling a Railroad 253 

compound of iron and one of the gases in the air 
which we call oxygen. The scientific name for 
what we call rust is oxide of iron.” 

“ Rust for mine,” Skinny told him. “ I don’t 
think much of this ox-hide business.” 

“ The first thing which the steel company has to 
do is to free the iron from that chemical compound 
which we call ore. This is done in blast furnaces. 
I will tell you how after we go over. The process 
is called smelting. 

“ After smelting, the iron is changed into various 
kinds of steel and this steel afterwards is made into 
a wonderful variety of articles which men and boys 
require, from steel rails to the tiny hairspring in a 
watch. I’ll tell you about that when we visit the 
mills, but we have had enough of it for to-night. 
Let’s go back to camp.” 

Gary is a queer kind of city. In the first place, 
it isn’t much more than half as old as we boys 
are. Our house at home, at the foot of Bob’s 
Hill, is ten times as old, maybe more. The Bible 
tells how you oughtn’t to build your house on the 
sand, but Gary was built right in the sand. When 


254 Boiling a Railroad 

folks want to raise flowers or grass, or have gardens, 
they bring in dirt from somewhere else. Some of 
the dirt is brought from as far away as Ohio and 
some from Illinois. Skinny says that he doesn’t 
see how people can tell where they live, because 
maybe they are living on Illinois soil and maybe 
on Ohio, and all the time thinking that it is Indiana. 

The people in the streets talk all kinds of queer 
foreign languages; more than half the people are 
foreigners. Their talk sounds like when Skinny 
makes up a lot of Indian words. Mr. Norton says 
that Gary is the meeting place of all the nations of 
the earth and that there are as many as forty na¬ 
tionalities there, counting Americans and Negroes. 

Two rivers flow through the city, called Grand 
Calumet and Little Calumet, but they are really the 
same river and there is nothing very grand about it, 
either. This river flows west through the southern 
part of the city and crosses over into Illinois; then 
it changes its mind and flows back again through 
the northern part of the city, or used to, but the 
place where it emptied into Lake Michigan, among 
the sand dunes, has filled up with sand and now it 


Boiling a Railroad 255 

doesn’t do much of any flowing at all, but has a 
big outlet into Lake Michigan at South Chicago, 
which has been dug out and made big enough for 
steamboats. When the people who run the steel 
mills don’t like the way the river runs, they move 
it somewhere else. 

But the queerest thing of all is the schools. More 
men go to school nights than boys do in the day¬ 
time, and they have school on Saturdays and in the 
summer time. The children don’t have to go Satur¬ 
days unless they want to, but they do go, just the 
same, a lot of them. I can’t understand it. Bill 
Wilson says that anybody must be crazy who would 
go to school on Saturday or during the summer 
vacation. 

Anyhow, we learned a lot going through the steel 
mills. First, Mr. Norton showed us the harbor, 
reaching in from Lake Michigan. There we found 
two big ore boats being unloaded. The ore was 
being dumped into great piles which looked like 
heaps of rust, or reddish-yellow dirt. 

“ I don’t see how they make iron out of that 
stuff,” I said. 


256 Boiling a Railroad 

“ It is just as I told you the other night,” Mr. 
Norton explained. “ They do not make the iron. 
It is already there in combination with other things. 
The thing to do is to get the iron loose, away from 
the other things and by itself. This is done by heat, 
and a gas, formed by half-burning coke, which com¬ 
bines with the oxygen in the ore. There are eight 
blast furnaces for this purpose. They are huge, 
vertical, steel-covered cylinders, lined with fire 
brick. The fuel used is coke, which is put in at the 
top, together with the iron ore and limestone. 
Watch for a minute and you will see little loaded 
cars traveling up to the top, to be dumped in.” 

“ What is the limestone for ? ” somebody asked. 

“ It is this way: a blast of hot air is blown 
through the burning coke in the furnace, much as 
you would blow air through a fire with bellows, only 
the furnace blast is heated first. It makes a fierce 
fire and causes intense heat, nearly ten times as hot 
as boiling water. The effect of this great heat on 
the ore is to drive out the oxygen, carbon, and other 
things and set the iron free. Some of these impuri¬ 
ties are drawn off in the form of gas; others com- 


Boiling a Railroad 257 

bine with the lime and make what is called slag. 
The liquid iron, being heaviest, collects at the bottom 
of the furnace and the liquid slag floats on top, like 
cream on a pan of milk.” 

“ How do they get it out? ” 

“ By taking a plug out of the furnace. When 
they want to draw off the slag they take out the 
upper plug and when they want iron, the lower plug. 
Watch what that workman is doing.” 

The man was jabbing at the furnace with a long 
rod. Suddenly there came a stream of white-hot 
slag, which sent out showers of sparks and flowed 
down a trough made in sand, and finally into an iron 
tub or ladle. Afterwards we saw the iron flow out 
in much the same way into big kettles, which they 
hustled across to the “ open hearth ” steel furnaces 
before it could get cool. 

“ Say,” said Skinny to one of the open-hearth 
men, “ it is some hot in there.” 

“ Only about four thousand degrees,” he told us. 

“ Why do you have to get it so hot ? ” 

“ You see, we have to boil the iron, until we boil, 
or burn, all the impurities out of it. It takes more 


258 Boiling a Railroad 

heat to boil iron than it does to boil water. When 
the iron comes over here from the blast furnace it is 
not pure.” 

“ Is steel the same as pure iron ? ” 

“ No; steel is a mixture of iron and other things, 
principally carbon. There are various kinds of steel, 
ranging from the coarse kind from which steel rails 
and the great, rough girders for buildings are made, 
to the fine steel used in razor blades and other fine- 
edged tools. The chief difference is in the amount 
of carbon which the steel contains. When we get 
orders from people, they tell us how much carbon to 
put in, depending on what they want to use the steel 
for. Sometimes a little copper is added. Steel 
containing copper does not rust so easily. 

“ Here at these mills, for example, we make, 
among other things, car axles, car springs, rails, 
and soft steel for tie plates. The steel for all these 
contains different amounts of carbon. Car springs 
require the most; then come axles; then rails, and 
least of all, tie plates.” 

“ What are tie plates ? ” Benny asked. 

“ They are steel plates which are put between the 


Boiling a Railroad 259 

tie and the rail in railroad building. Only a little 
carbon is put in, in order that there may be some 
‘ give ’ to them.” 

“ How do you know how much carbon is left in 
the iron when it comes over from the blast fur¬ 
nace?” Mr. Norton asked him. 

“ We don’t know. We first burn it all out; then 
we can put in exactly as much as is wanted. We 
call it ‘ recarburizing.’ ” 

“ How do you add the carbon? ” 

“ It is very simple. We throw ordinary hard 
coal into the furnace. Anthracite coal, you know, 
is over ninety per cent carbon. It is all weighed 
out in bags, ready for use, and we throw in as 
many bags as are necessary. Watch; they are going 
to tap that furnace.” 

A man was jabbing at it, much as had been done 
at the blast furnace. Suddenly the air was filled 
with sparks and a great light almost blinded us. 
A white-hot stream of liquid steel poured out like 
water and then formed wonderful, dazzling falls 
as it dropped into a great kettle. In a few minutes 
a big traveling crane lifted up the kettle and swung 


260 Boiling a Railroad 

it over to where some huge iron molds were 

standing. 

“ There goes a railroad, fellows,” shouted Mr. 
Shepard, as the kettle was tipped, filling one mold 
after another. 

It was great and it was scary. We afterwards 
saw the molds taken off, leaving columns of red-hot 
steel, called “ ingots,” standing on end and sending 
out so much heat that they almost burned us as 
they passed on little trains of flat cars. 

Other great cranes lifted them and lowered them 
into fiery holes, called “ soaking pits,” where they 
were left to heat some more, and more evenly. Best 
of all was the rolling mill, where all the machinery 
seemed to be running alone without any men 
around. Two or three were standing near, but they 
didn’t seem to be doing much. A crane swung over, 
lifted an ingot out of the soaking pit, placed it on 
an electric car, which moved over in front of the 
first rolling machine. Then the ingot tipped itself 
over into the machine and started through a lot of 
rollers, without anybody touching it at all. We 
walked along, watching it grow longer and longer 


Boiling a Railroad 261 

and smaller and smaller, until in about five minutes 
at the farther end of the mill there came a regular 
Fourth of July celebration, with sparks flying to 
beat the band. Then, instead of an ingot, seven 
rails dropped out. 

We were tired when we went back to camp that 
night. I dreamed of a boiling railroad, down which 
we floated in boats, back to Bob’s Hill. It dazzled 
our eyes and was so hot that we hardly could stand 
it. When I woke up the sun was shining in my 
face. 

“ Come on, fellows,” I heard Mr. Norton say. 
“ Let’s get busy. It is going to be a warm day and 
we have many things to do.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


“ two o’clock and all’s well 


“ W TELL, boys,” said Mr. Norton, "how 
\ \ about going home ? ” 

We were sitting around the campfire one even¬ 
ing, some days after our trip to Gary, talking about 
our folks, wondering what they were doing and 
whether they missed us any. 

“ I have finished my business in Chicago very 
satisfactorily,” he went on, “ and I have had a good 
rest, the very best kind of a rest—a life out of doors, 
on the water or in the woods. I certainly feel like 
a new man and a better one. It is very delightful 
here, but I, for one, must be getting back to work. 
How about it, Mr. Secretary? Doesn’t your 
mother’s woodbox need filling? July is almost 
gone.” 

Everybody laughed at that. Our woodbox is al¬ 
ways getting empty. No matter how much the fel- 
262 


“ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 263 

lows need me in some game or to hold a meeting, 
they usually have to wait while I fill the woodbox. 
You see, we have a wood-lot at home up on East 
Mountain, near Savoy, and we burn the wood in 
our kitchen stove. 

“ I filled it three feet above the top before I left,” 
I told him. “ I had a letter from Ma yesterday 
and she thought that it was about time to be getting 
back.” 

“ We have had the time of our lives,” said Skinny, 
“ and we want to spend a part of our vacation on 
Bob’s Hill and in our cave at Peck’s Falls, but we 
haven’t saved anybody from drowning yet, although 
I have watched the lake every day. There ain’t 
much chance to do the rescue act at home. 
You couldn’t drown in Hoosac River if you 
tried.” 

“ You could in the mill race,” Benny told him. 
" A boy did once.” 

“ Great snakes! ” said Bill. “ Maybe I wouldn’t 
like to see our cave. Skinny’s cave in Anderson’s 
gully ain’t any good. I wouldn’t give five cents a 
dozen for caves like that. I’ll bet that our cave at 


264 “ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 

Peck’s Falls has filled up or something, we have been 
gone so long.” 

“ Suppose that we take a vote on it. There are 
some things to be done before we leave, one thing 
in particular. To-morrow will be Tuesday. The 
train from Valparaiso, Friday morning, will get us 
home about noon Saturday. Those who are in 
favor of going Friday morning will caw when the 
secretary calls your names.” 

Everybody cawed except Skinny. He wouldn’t 
do it because there hadn’t been anybody drowned 
yet. 

“What is there to do besides packing up?” I 
asked. 

“ What I had in mind was this: Mrs. Laurence 
has given us a number of good times and you have 
made some delightful acquaintances among the girls 
at the Flint Lake cottages. What I propose is that 
we entertain them before we go. We are not very 
well fixed to serve dinner to so many, but we could 
invite them for the afternoon and serve ice cream, 
cake, and lemonade, and I believe that they would 
enjoy visiting the camp. What do you say? ” 


“Two O’clock and All’s Well” 265 


“ I think that it would be fun,” said Bill. 

“ It would be fun,” I told him, “ but what would 
they eat and drink out of? We haven’t dishes 
enough for so many.” 

“ Maybe we could hire some dishes in town.” 

“ Make each one bring a cup and saucer and 
spoon,” said Skinny, after thinking a moment. 
“ My mother did that once. It won’t hurt ’em any 
and it will help us a lot. They can drink out of the 
cups and eat out of the saucers.” 

“ Nobly spoken. I really believe that our talented 
young patrol leader has solved the problem. I am 
sure the ladies would be willing to help us that 
much, particularly if we promise to wash the 
dishes.” 

“ We could cook some eggs if we wanted to,” said 
Hank. “ I can cook them fine with their jackets 
on.”' 

“ Boys,” said Mr. Norton, “ with all respect for 
Hank’s cooking, I must say that the thought of 
eggs is not so pleasing as it was when we first came. 
I have eaten so many that I am ashamed to look a 
hen in the face. While I think that we have done 


266 “ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 


very well in the cooking line, it is too big a contract 
to undertake to cook for such a crowd—good cooks, 
probably, every one of them.” 

“ Guess what,” said Benny, “ why not have the 
Rattlesnakes, too? They are good fellows and they 
gave us something to eat that time. We are going 
away, anyhow,” he went on, turning to Skinny, “ so 
that it needn’t make any difference about the 
girls.” 

“ Good idea,” Mr. Norton told him. “ I was 
going to suggest it, myself. But we must make them 
all understand, boys and girls both, that they are to 
come early in the afternoon, after dinner, and that 
they must go home before supper. If we don’t we 
are going to get ourselves into trouble.” 

That was the way we fixed it, and we hardly 
could wait until morning to find out whether the 
girls could come over that afternoon. We knew that 
the Rattlesnakes would come. 

“ We’ll start at one o’clock,” Mr. Shepard told 
us, after talking it over with his patrol, “ and we 
will make a game of it, if you are willing. The 
Ravens will be one army and the Rattlesnakes, the 


“ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 267 

enemy. We’ll agree on a division line to show 
where your territory begins. The game will be for 
our fellows to try to get into your country before 
two o’clock without being seen. As soon as any 
Raven on watch sees one of us, he must call out 
his name. The invading Scout then will be ‘ dead ’ 
and out of the game.” 

Say, that is a great game. We had so much fun 
playing it that we almost forgot about the girls. 

We fixed on a dividing line between the country 
of the Rattlesnakes and the country of the Ravens, 
and when one o’clock came Skinny posted us at dif¬ 
ferent points to watch. Mr. Norton had gone to 
Lake View station for the ice cream and other stuff 
which we had arranged to have sent up on the noon 
car. 

The way in which we had been placed, I didn’t 
see how anybody could get into our country without 
our seeing him. I made up my mind, anyhow, that 
they wouldn’t get by me. It began to look as if 
they were not going to try, for I could hear the other 
Ravens yelling out a name every once in a while 
as they picked off the enemy. 


268 41 Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 


“ Watch sharp, Pedro,” called Skinny; “ we’ve 
got five out of the eight.” 

I was on the east border line, where I could watch 
the lake on one side and a long stretch across our 
front. 

“ There is nobody in sight,” I called to Skinny, 
“ but somebody’s boat is loose. The wind is taking 
it down the lake this way.” 

“ Can’t you get hold of it? We will need an¬ 
other boat for the girls.” 

“ It is too far out, unless I swim, and I don’t want 
to get wet on account of the party.” 

“ Gee! I wish I had my rope. Keep your eye on 
the boat and we’ll get it later.” 

“ Say, Skinny,” I called after a few moments, 
“ the wind is blowing from the south.” 

“ Never mind about the wind. The Rattlesnakes 
are blowing from the north, all right. What of it, 
anyhow ? ” 

“ Nothing much; only that boat is coming against 
the wind.” 

“ Must be a current or something. Look out now, 
or they will get past you.” 


“ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 269 

I kept looking at that boat, floating down 
the lake against the wind, and I couldn’t under¬ 
stand it. 

“ Watch my place, Skinny,” I called, finally. “ I 
am going after that boat. There is something funny 
about it.” 

I hurried back to where one of our boats was tied 
and soon was pulling toward the empty boat, keep¬ 
ing watch over my shoulder the best I could. 

The boat was coming along at pretty good speed 
and almost had floated into our country before I 
drew up alongside. Then I saw what made it go 
against the wind. A hand had hold of one end and 
somebody’s head was bobbing along with only the 
face out of water. I took one look and was just 
in time. 

“ George! ” I yelled, and George was “ dead ” a 
few feet from the boundary line. 

Just then one of the other Scouts caught some¬ 
body. 

“ Seven are gone,” called Skinny. “ The other 
one is Phil. He’s a foxy guy, but keep him out a 
few minutes longer and we’ll win. There goes the 


270 “ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 

car. It is due in Valparaiso at two o’clock and it is 
a few minutes late.” 

The interurban car was passing the camp as he 
spoke. I could see a handkerchief fluttering out of 
one of the windows, but I couldn’t tell who was 
waving. 

“ There is some girl waving to you, Skinny,” I 
told him. 

“ They will do it,” he said, grinning. “ ’Tain’t 
my fault that I am rich and handsome.” 

“Oh, shucks! She’s gone, anyhow, and if you 
don’t stop staring down the track Phil will slip in 
on us; then where will we be? ” 

“If he slips past me, he’s a dandy. It’s ’most 

two o’clock- Say, there they come, and we 

dassn’t leave to meet them.” 

We could hear the girls coming along the lake 
shore, south of the camp, laughing and talking, but 
we could not see them on account of the trees and 
bushes. Skinny held his watch a minute, waiting, 
while the voices came nearer and nearer. 

“ That old turnip of yours is slow, Skinny,” called 
Bill. “ I ’most know it is. We’ve got to quit; that’s 



“Two O’clock and All’s Well” 271 

all there is about it. They will be in sight in half 
a minute.” 

Skinny gave another look at the bushes, from 
behind which we could hear the girls coming, then 
put his watch back in his pocket. 

“ Two o’clock,” he shouted, “and all’s well!” 
like they do in real armies. 

“ Two o’clock,” I yelled, “ and all’s well! ” 

The other boys took it up, and all down the line 
we could hear the shouts, “ Two o’clock and all’s 
well!” 

Just then we heard a boy’s voice back of the 
bushes repeat: 

“ Two o’clock and all’s well, and don’t you forget 
it. Say, if you guys are looking for me, you are 
looking in the wrong direction.” 

You could have knocked me down with a feather, 
for there was Phil walking toward us with Alice 
Laurence, and there was a bunch of other girls all 
around him, laughing at us. It ’most made Skinny 
mad. 

“ You see,” Phil went on, “ I felt so tired after 
eating dinner that I came on the car. They wouldn’t 


272 “ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 

stop for me at Camp Bob’s Hill and I had to go on 
to Lake View. The girls came along just then, and 
here we are.” 

“ Was that you, waving to Skinny out of the car 
window ? ” I asked him. 

“ Sure. Why not? He was looking for me and 
I wanted him to know that I was passing.” 

Skinny glanced over at me and made a motion 
as if he wanted to lasso somebody, only he didn’t 
have his rope. We hadn’t thought of that way of 
getting into our country, or we should have placed 
someone at North Wood station to guard against it. 

“ Well, fellows,” laughed Mr. Norton, “ Phil 
seems to have outwitted you and the Rattlesnakes 
have won. Now, let us make our guests welcome.” 

They had a good time, all right; it was easy to 
see that. First, we showed them everything in the 
camp and they were interested, especially Mrs. Lau¬ 
rence. 

“ That oven looks good to me,” she said. “ It 
may not be quite so convenient as a kitchen range, 
but I believe that it will do the business.” 

“ It has provided daily bread for these husky 


“ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 273 

boys, not to mention myself,” Mr. Norton told her, 
“ and they look as if it had agreed with them.” 

After they had seen everything in camp worth 
seeing, we gave them reserved seats on the grass, 
where it slopes down to the lake, and had some boat 
races between the Ravens and Rattlesnakes. The 
Rattlesnakes beat us every time. They had had 
more practice, just as we had done more scouting 
and tracking. 

Finally, Mr. Shepard tossed a large rubber ball 
on to the grass. 

“ You fellows from the effete East,” said he, 
winking at Mr. Norton, “ have had a great deal to 
say about playing ball. Here is your chance to make 
good.” 

“ What did he say about our feet, Pedro ? ” Benny 
whispered. 

Before I could answer, Skinny, who had been 
eying the ball in disgust, spoke up. 

“ We wouldn’t look at a ball like that at home, 
Mr. Shepard,” said he. “ That kind of ball is for 
babies. Here is the kind that we use.” 

He went into the tent and brought out a regula- 


274 “ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 

tion league ball. The Ravens thought more of that 
ball than almost anything else we had and had paid 
a dollar and a quarter for it before leaving home. 

Mr. Shepard nearly had a fit, laughing. “ I 
thought I should get a rise out of Skinny,” he said, 
as soon as he could speak. “To tell the truth,” he 
went on, “ we usually play with a league ball our¬ 
selves, but someone told me the other day about a 
game called Water Baseball. It is played in the 
water much the same as ordinary baseball, only we 
fix floats for bases and the players swim from one 
to the other. A league ball would not do at all. 
This rubber ball is light; it is water-tight, and will 
float on the surface of the water. It cannot get 
away from us. What do you say? Shall we try 
it? Would you girls like to see the game? ” 

There was great shouting and clapping of hands 
at that. 

“Very well, then. You fellows get into your 
bathing suits, while Mr. Norton and I fix the bases. 
I don’t know exactly how the game is played, but 
we’ll try it by anchoring boards for bases and will 
do the best we can. We’ll play five innings.” 


“ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 275 

You never saw such splashing or heard such 
yelling as when the game had fairly started, 
and some of the yelling was done by the girls on 
shore. 

The Rattlesnakes went to bat first and I thought 
that we never should get them out, but after a time 
we had our chance and we made the water fly, even 
if we didn’t do much to the ball. As the game went 
on, first one side, then the other was ahead; then, 
at the very end, it was a tie, with the bases full and 
Skinny’s turn to bat. 

He was sitting on the shore, resting and looking 
anxious, when Mr. Shepard called his name. We 
all were anxious and the girls were the most excited 
of all. 

“ Oh, Skinny,” I heard Alice Laurence call in a 
low voice, so that the team in the water would not 
hear. 

Skinny looked around, then went back toward 
where she was standing to see what she wanted. 
She stepped forward to meet him, and before we 
could guess what was going to happen, pinned a 
big, black crow to his shirt front. 


276 “ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 


“ Skinny Miller,” said she, with her eyes shining 
and her cheeks as red as fire, “ if you don’t win that 
game I’ll never let you pull me out of a canyon 
again, and maybe I won’t speak to you.” 

Say, you ought to have seen Skinny when she said 
that. He gave her one look, then squared his shoul¬ 
ders and plunged into the lake. I knew that if he 
didn’t knock that ball over into Canada Lake it 
wouldn’t be because he didn’t try his best. 

The very first ball that was pitched he struck at 
so hard that he splashed into the water out of sight. 
If he had hit it, the game would have been won right 
there; but he missed. 

We all gave a groan, standing on the shore, 
watching. 

“ Remember! ” shouted Alice, loud this time, 
after two strikes had been called. 

Then Skinny smashed it. The ball flew over be¬ 
tween the short stop and second base. The left 
fielder grabbed for it, but it slipped out of his hands 
and went spinning across the water. 

“ Swim,” we yelled. “ Swim for your life.” 

Skinny started for first base, making the water 



She Stepped Forward and Pinned a Big Black Crow on His 

Shirt 





























































“ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 277 

fly in all directions. Bill, who was on third, gave 
one yell and put for “ home,” spouting water like 
a whale. Down the lake came the ball toward home 
base, we almost holding out breath. It fell short. 
The catcher swam after it and then back to the base 
as fast as he could, but you have to go some to beat 
Bill Wilson swimming. There was an anxious mo¬ 
ment; then: 

“ Safe! ” called the umpire. The Ravens had 
won. 

“ I am afraid that you boys will not appreciate 
this ice cream,” said Mr. Norton, when we were 
passing saucers of it after the game. “ The water 
must have cooled you off, but I am sure the girls 
will welcome it.” 

“ Leave it to us,” George told him, and I knew 
from the way Bill was eying every dish that he 
passed, there wouldn’t be any wasted. 

Raven Patrol never will forget that afternoon 
and I don’t think the Rattlesnakes will, either. We 
knew that Mrs. Laurence and the girls were having 
a good time because they wouldn’t go home. It 
made Mr. Norton anxious, when six o’clock drew 


278 “ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 

near and nobody gave any signs of leaving. He 
took me to one side. 

“ Did you make it plain to them, John,” he asked, 
“ that they were invited only for the afternoon and 
were expected to go home before supper? ” 

“ Yes, sir,” I told him. “ There couldn’t have 
been any mistake about it.” 

“Well, what shall we do? We can’t very well 
send them home and we haven’t enough food in 
the camp for so many, except coffee and bread and 
butter, to say nothing about not having dishes.” 

“We have cups and saucers,” I told him. “ The 
folks brought them. All we need do is to wash 
them. It will be easy to get eggs at some farm¬ 
house. You don’t need plates for hard-boiled eggs, 
or for bread and butter.” 

“Eggs!” groaned Mr. Norton. “But I don’t 
see any other way out of it. You have a versatile 
mind, John, and no mistake. No wonder the boys 
made you secretary. We’ll give them fifteen 
minutes more and then, if they don’t start, when I 
give the signal you slip quietly out with one of the 
other boys and get four or five dozen eggs some- 


“ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 279 

where, and go in a hurry. You’d better make it six 
dozen. We’ve got to eat something. Every one of 
those boys will want three apiece. And go up to 
the huckleberry marsh and see if Mr. Dillingham 
can spare five or six quarts of berries.” 

It seemed to me as if Mrs. Laurence was getting 
almost as nervous as Mr. Norton. She kept gazing 
out toward the lake and sometimes walking down to 
the shore, but sort of smiling to herself whenever 
she caught Mr. Norton looking at his watch. 

Suddenly, just as Benny and I were going to 
start after the eggs, I saw her face clear like when 
a cloud lifts from Greylock back home, leaving the 
mountain smiling down at us. I watched to see 
what she was looking at. A boat was coming down 
the lake, with a man in it, rowing for all he was 
worth. 

When the boat had drawn up to our little pier, 
I thought that he never would get through handing 
out baskets, while all the girls laughed and clapped 
their hands to see how surprised we were. 

“Friends,” said Mrs. Laurence, “this is a little 
surprise from all of us girls. We feared that we 


280 “ Two O’clock and All’s Well ” 


should be having such a good time that we might 
forget to go home and so left word to have a picnic 
lunch for the whole crowd brought here at six 
o’clock.” 

“ Pedro,” whispered Mr. Norton, “ you needn’t 
go after those eggs.” 

“ Is it ? ” yelled Skinny, dancing around while 
the baskets were being unpacked on our table. “ Is 
it? It is” he shouted. “Fried chicken till you 
can’t rest! What do you know about it, fellers?” 

Wednesday was a glorious day, and as it was 
to be our last free day in camp, for Thursday we 
should be packing up, we made the most of it. We 
said good-by to all the places and all the people we 
had grown fond of during the month we had spent 
there, and when night came we were too tired even 
to light a campfire. We lay around on the shore, 
talking about Bob’s Hill and listening to the music 
from the hotel across the lake, and watching the 
little ferry-boat crossing back and forth. 

Mr. Norton had gone to spend the evening with 
some friends, telling us not to sit up for him as he 
wouldn’t get back until late. We were glad enough 


“Two O’clock and All’s Well” 281 


to turn in early and let the music, coming across the 
water, soft-like and beautiful, lull us to sleep. 

I don’t know how long I had been asleep when I 
heard, as if in a dream, awful screams. I awoke, 
clutching Skinny, who was next to me, and we sat 
there, half dazed, listening. 

Then it came again—the shrieking of women and 
cries for help. 


CHAPTER XX 


THE WRECK OF THE “ POLLY JANE ” 

HEN screams wake you up in the night 



Y Y that way out of a sound sleep and leave 
you there in the dark, trembling and wondering, 
they seem worse than in the daytime. 

“ Did you hear it, Pedro?” gasped Skinny. 
“ What was it? ” 

Then it came again. There could be no mistake 
this time. We were all wide awake, huddled to¬ 
gether, hardly daring to breathe. 

Someone struck a match. It made a flickering 
light for a moment, then went out, but during that 
moment I could see the faces of the boys and I 
knew that I was not the only one who was scared. 

“ Help, help! ” it came again, louder than be¬ 
fore. “ We are drowning.” 

“ Great snakes! ” exclaimed Bill. “ Somebody 
is in the lake. It sounds as if there were forty 
of them, all women.” 


282 


The Wreck of the “ Polly Jane” 283 

Outside, the fire was still smoldering. In the 
dimness I could see our bathing suits on a line, 
ready for use in the morning. Skinny saw them 
at the same time. 

“ Don’t put on your clothes, fellers,” he told 
us. “ Get into your bathing suits. It’s up to us 
to save those folks.” 

In less time than it takes to tell about it we had 
slipped into them and were making for the two 
boats on a run. Without a word we tumbled into 
them and shoved off, Skinny and Bill at the oars. 

Across the water, from a point opposite the 
hotel, cries for help kept coming and the wailing 
of drowning women, or girls, and at the same 
time we could hear the people laughing and singing 
at the hotel. It is dreadful to* hear the shrieks of 
the dying, mingled with music and laughter. 

“ They can’t hear in, the hotel,” said Hank, “ they 
are making so much noise. It all depends on us, 
and Mr. Norton hasn’t come back yet.” 

Skinny pulled like a good fellow, stopping only 
to yell back over his shoulder to the drowning 
folks, as the boats shot through the water. 


284 The Wreck of the “Polly Jane” 


“ We are coming. Scouts to the rescue.” 

It was time that somebody was coming. When 
we drew near, we found that the old ferry-boat, 
the Polly Jane y had been wrecked and was half 
under water. Clinging to it and scared half to 
death, were the passengers, a lot of them. 

A dozen hands grabbed frantically for the boat 
as we came up, and I was afraid that they would 
swamp us. 

“ Back away,” I yelled, forgetting that Skinny 
was patrol leader and the one to give orders. 

We pulled back out of reach and then another 
wail went up, for they thought that we were going 
to leave them. 

“ Gee-whilikins! ” exclaimed Skinny. “ One, 
two, four, ten, sixteen of them, and not a man in 
the bunch. We are up against the real thing.” 

Then he turned to the girls. “ We’ll save every 
one of you if you will keep quiet and help,” he 
told them, “ but we can’t do it if you don’t help. 
If you touch the boats until we say the word, we’ll 
go off and leave you.” 

We wouldn’t have done it, of course, but we had 


The Wreck of the “Polly Jane” 285 

to make them understand, and when folks are 
scared they don’t know much. 

“ Is there anybody who can’t hang on ? ” 

“ I can’t much longer,” said one. “ Somebody 
stepped on my hand.” 

“ Fellers,” shouted Skinny, in a hurry, “ in with 
you, everyone except Bill.” 

There was a great splashing; the boats rocked 
until they dipped water, but Bill and Skinny held 
them as steady as they could. And there we were, 
paddling around in the middle of the lake, in the 
dark, with sixteen scared girls clinging to the tim¬ 
bers of the wreck. 

In a moment the boats were pulled alongside and 
we commenced the work of rescue. It was fun 
after we became used to it and Skinny was having 
more fun than anybody. He had hated to go back 
to Bob’s Hill without saving somebody from 
drowning and here were two apiece. 

“ Gee, fellers,” said he, “ we didn’t bring the 
rope, but never mind; we’ll do the trick, just the 
same.” 

The first one we took off was the girl who said 


286 The Wreck of the “Polly Jane” 

she couldn’t hang on much longer. Skinny pulled 
up close and two of us helped her climb in while 
the other Scouts hung on to the sides of the boats 
to hold them steady. 

One after another, in the same way, we helped 
the others into the boats, until both were filled, 
four in each, besides Skinny and Bill. 

“ We’ll have to come back for the rest,” said 
Skinny. “ Can you hang on ? It won’t take 
long.” 

Those who had to wait said that they could. 

“ How about it, Pedro? ” asked Bill. “ Are you 
Scouts all right?” 

“ We’ll hang on somewhere and get a rest,” I 
told him. 

Still from the hotel came the sound of music 
and laughing. It made Bill mad. He dropped the 
oars for a moment, braced himself, and— 

Say, maybe you never heard Bill do his best. 
The time at the marshmallow party wasn’t any¬ 
thing by the side of it. He made more noise than 
the whole sixteen girls put together. His yells 
floated out over the lake, until they seemed to fill 


The Wreck of the “ Polly Jane ” 287 

all the air. It was awful, and in the dim light I 
could see the girls on the wreck look at one an¬ 
other in wonder. Bill ended with a caw; then took 
up the oars and started for the shore. 

“ I guess that will hold them for a while/’ he 
said. 

It did, too. The music stopped at once and, 
instead of laughter, came the sound of anxious 
voices, as people rushed out of the hotel to find 
out what terrible thing had happened. Soon we 
could see the light of a lantern go bobbing down 
to the shore and stop there, and we knew that 
Raven Patrol was landing its first load of ship¬ 
wrecked passengers. 

Almost before we knew it, Skinny and Bill were 
back for another load and we helped the girls in 
the same way as before. 

“ We’ll have to make another trip to get you 
fellers,” Skinny told us, when they were ready to 
start. 

“ Trip nothin’,” said Hank. “ You don’t have 
to make any trip for us. We’ll swim in.” 

“Where is Benny?” asked Skinny. “Oh, 


288 The Wreck of the “Polly Jane” 

there you are. Here, Benny, climb in the boat and 
row. I’m going to swim with the bunch.” 

Then Benny forgot all about Scout law, which 
says that Scouts must obey their officers. 

“ I won’t do it,” said he, “ and you can’t make 
me. I’m no baby, I guess, even if I am littler 
than you. You are a better rower than I am, any¬ 
how.” 

He started for the shore as he spoke, we after 
him, and there wasn’t anything for Bill and Skinny 
to do but follow with the boats. They could have 
passed us easily, of course, but they kept near to 
be ready if anything should happen. 

It wasn’t so very far to shore, but I thought I 
never should get there. We had been swimming 
around so much that I was nearly all in and I no¬ 
ticed that Benny was getting wabbly. 

“ Let’s practice life-saving, Benny,” I said. 
“ Put one hand on my shoulder. I want to see if 
I can do it.” 

“ You do it fine,” he told me as, side by side, 
with Benny resting one hand on me and swimming 
with the other, we made our way to the shore. 


The Wreck of the “Polly Jane” 289 

Just the same, I was glad when we could touch 
bottom. 

I guess all the folks in the hotel were there to 
meet us and they gave a cheer when we landed. 
The girls were starting up to the hotel to be rubbed 
and put to bed while their clothes were drying, 
when a woman broke through the crowd. 

“Where’s Ed?” she cried. “I don’t see 
Ed.” 

“ My God! ” said one of them. “ We forgot 
the ferryman.” 

There wasn’t a sound for a moment and it 
turned me cold to think about it, for Ed hadn’t been 
in sight when we first reached the wreck. We 
had been too excited even to wonder why the girls 
were there alone. Then the woman gave a screech 
which I can hear now in my dreams sometimes. 

“ My boy! My boy! ” was all that she could 
say, over and over again. 

With another shriek, she made a rush for the 
lake, but a man grabbed her before she reached 
the water. 

“ There, there, Mrs. Benson,” said he, trying 


290 The Wreck of the “Polly Jane” 

to quiet her. “ We’ll take a boat and go after 
him. We’ll save him.” 

“ Save nothin’! ” whispered Skinny to me. 
“ He’s been in the water half an hour already. 
They can’t find him in the dark.” 

“ We’ve got to try,” said Bill, “ and do our best. 
Come on, Skinny. You and I are freshest and we 
are the best swimmers.” 

They jumped into one of the boats and pushed 
off, while a couple of men took the other. Then 
Skinny called to me. 

“ Jump in, Pedro,” he said. “ We’ll need you 
to do the rowing.” 

I rowed straight for the wreck, for it seemed 
to me that if we couldn’t find him near there, we 
should not be able to find him at all before morning. 

As the boat neared the wreck the boys kept call¬ 
ing, “ Ed, Ed, where are you ? ” But we couldn’t 
hear a sound. The chances were that he was at 
the bottom of the lake somewhere, and we knew 
it, but we hoped that he might be hanging to some 
floating plank, too weak, maybe, to get to shore. 

“ I don’t understand it,” said Bill. “ Ed could 


The Wreck of the “Polly Jane” 291 

swim like a fish. I’ve seen him in the water a lot 
of times and so have you. It wouldn’t have been 
any trick at all for him to have got to shore.” 

“ Maybe it scared him when the ferry was 
wrecked,” Skinny told him, “ and he made for 
the other shore to get away.” 

“ Who? Ed? Not much. Ed wasn’t that kind, 
and you know it.” 

“Well, why didn’t he swim in and get help? 
We had to come more than twice as far. Yes, 
three times.” 

“ I don’t know why, but you couldn’t drown 
Ed, with these timbers within reach, any more 
than you could drown me, unless something kept 
him from swimming or yelling.” 

“ That’s so,” I said. “ I can’t sfaim as well as 
Bill, but you couldn’t drown me in this lake, unless 
I had a cramp or something.” 

“ Then he must have been hurt,” declared Skinny. 
“What could have hurt him? If he’d had cramps 
he would have yelled and we would have heard 
him. We didn’t hear any man’s voice yelling. 
He wasn’t there when we came; that’s a cinch.” 


292 The Wreck of the “ Polly Jane” 

“ I don’t know what hurt him,” Bill told him, 
“ but whatever it was, it must have happened when 
the boat was wrecked, although I can’t think what 
could have wrecked it. Maybe he got caught in 
the cable and was dragged under.” 

“ Bill,” said Skinny, “ now you have said some¬ 
thing. That is where we’ll find him.” 

We had reached the half-sunken boat by that 
time, but, although we looked everywhere, Ed was 
not in sight. 

“ Hold her steady, Pedro, I am going to dive.” 

Bill jumped into the air as he spoke, turned 
and struck the water head first, and went down 
out of sight. Almost at the same instant Skinny 
dove out of the other end of the boat. I watched 
anxiously until they came up, Skinny first, gasping 
for breath. 

“ Nothin’ doin’,” he panted. 

“ He ain’t caught in the cable,” called Bill, as 
soon as he came up. “ I found the end and it is 
all clear. It’s broke.” 

“Did you get bottom?” 

“ You bet I did. It’s all mud.” 


The Wreck of the “ Polly Jane” 293 

“ I didn’t,” said Skinny, “ but I went down a 
long way.” 

“ How deep is it? ” 

“ About fourteen feet, maybe sixteen. It is 
shallower here than anywhere else on the lake ex¬ 
cept near shore.” 

The boys rested a minute; then dove again and 
kept diving, until they were so tired that they 
couldn’t get bottom. 

“ Hey, you fellers,” shouted Skinny to the 
Scouts on shore. “ Get busy and bring some rocks 
to help us go down.” 

It is easy to dive down deep when you carry a 
heavy stone. By that time the water was dotted 
with lanterns. It seemed as if every boat on the 
lake was out, joining in the search. 

“ Bill,” said Skinny, when we were waiting 
for the stones, “ maybe he’s caught under the boat, 
or in the timbers somewhere. Let’s try it again. 
You take that side and I’ll try this.” 

Once more they went down. Skinny came up 
empty-handed and hung on to the boat, panting, 
while I watched for Bill. I thought that he never 


294 The Wreck of the “Polly Jane” 

would come up and was getting ready to dive in 
after him, when I saw his head come above the 
water, close to the wreck. He caught hold of the 
timbers with one hand and was holding something 
with the other. 

“ I’ve got him,” he said in a queer voice, as soon 
as he could speak. “ He’s a goner, I guess. His 
clothes were caught on a spike. I thought I never 
should get them loose.” 

We lifted the body into the boat and started for 
the shore, calling to the other boats as we went. 


CHAPTER XXI 


FIRST AID TO THE INJURED 

B OY Scouts are taught all about how to save 
people from drowning and what to do when 
anybody gets hurt. You have to be able to do 
such things before you can become a Scout. There 
are twelve things which you have to do before 
you can get a first-class Scout badge. One of 
them is to swim fifty yards; another is to know 
how to give first aid to the injured. We set a 
man’s broken leg once, when there wasn’t any 
doctor around. When he came he said that we had 
done it fine. 

The book says that you must know how to 
“ demonstrate artificial respiration,” which is a 
high-toned way of saying that you must know 
how to make a fellow breathe when he can’t. We 
had practiced saving drowning people and bringing 
them back to life a lot of times, but we never had 
done the real thing. 


295 


296 First Aid to the Injured 

“ It isn’t enough to be able to swim,” Mr. Nor¬ 
ton had told us. “ Half the cases of drowning 
could be avoided if folks knew what to do to 
bring life back into the body of the drowned person 
and kept at it long enough.” 

That was what made Skinny so anxious to save 
somebody before going back to Bob’s Hill. 

“ Row for all you are worth, Pedro,” he told 
me. “ Come over here, Bill. Help me hold him 
up and give the water a chance to run out of his 
lungs.” 

He put his fingers into Ed’s mouth to make sure 
that his throat wasn’t being stopped up by his 
tongue or anything; then they held him with 
his face down and his head lower than his 
body. 

All the time I was rowing as hard as I could 
and it didn’t take us long to reach the landing and 
lay the body down on the grass. 

“ His mother has gone off in a faint,” I heard 
someone say, “ and it’s a mercy. We’ve got her 
in bed.” 

“Where is the nearest doctor?” 


First Aid to the Injured 297 

“ Valparaiso. We have been trying to get one. 
I am afraid it will be an hour or more before we 
can get anybody out here.” 

“ It won’t make much difference, I guess. He’s 
dead, anyhow, poor fellow.” 

“ Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t,” Skinny told 
them, “ and we ain’t going to wait for any doctor. 
If you folks will stand back and give him air, 
we’ll show you what Boy Scouts can do, but get a 
doctor here as soon as you can.” 

“ Stoop down, one of you fellers,” he said to 
us. “ Let’s get the water out of him. We can’t 
wait for a barrel.” 

I got down on all fours and the boys laid Ed 
across me on his stomach, with his head hanging 
down almost to the ground. Skinny made sure 
that his tongue was all right, then they began to 
squeeze the body to force out the water. 

After that had been done we laid him down on 
the grass, with his head on somebody’s coat and his 
face down, like the book says, to keep his tongue 
from dropping back into the throat and shutting off 
the air. Then Skinny went to work. 


298 First Aid to the Injured 

When you are trying to bring a drowned person 
back to life you have to get air into his lungs. 
What he needs is air. As he can’t breathe him¬ 
self, you have to do it for him. The book calls it 
“ artificial respiration,” but it takes too long to say 
it. 

Skinny knelt on the grass by the side of the 
body, placed his hands between the short ribs, then 
pressed down with the weight of his body long 
enough to count three. Then he lifted his weight 
long enough to count three. The first movement 
drove the air out of the lungs; the second made 
the chest larger and let the air in. He did that 
twelve or fifteen times a minute, like breathing, 
until he was tired. Then Bill took hold. 

When Bill was tired, somebody else started in. 
We all took turns that way until every one of 
us had had a chance and Bill was hard at it for 
the second time. Still, we could see no signs of 
life. 

“ I guess he’s a goner,” said Bill in despair. 
“ We’ve been at it almost an hour. Ain’t the doctor 
here yet ? ” 


First Aid to the Injured 299 

“ Good work, boys,” we heard someone say just 
then. “ Keep at it two hours, if necessary. Here, 
let me try.” 

It was Mr. Norton, and we never were more 
glad to see anybody in our lives. He had come back 
to camp and was chasing around trying to find out 
what had become of us. 

“ We’ll try another method for a change,” said 
he, turning Ed over on his back as he spoke. 
“ Here, Bill, take this handkerchief and hold his 
tongue. That’s right. Whew! The lad got an 
ugly bump on his head.” 

He knelt back of the body, took hold of Ed’s 
arms above the elbows, and pulled them straight 
back until the hands touched the ground back of the 
head. He held them there, pulling steadily, long 
enough to count three; then carried the arms down 
again to the chest and pressed hard to force the air 
out. He did that about twelve times a minute and 
we could hear the air go in and out, just like 
breathing. 

When Mr. Norton was tired, someone else took 
hold, and at last, when we were almost ready to 


300 First Aid to the Injured 

give up, Ed’s eyelids flickered a little and we heard 
a faint sigh. 

“ He’s coming, boys,” shouted Mr. Norton, ex¬ 
citedly. “ We are going to make it. Get a bed 
ready for him, somebody. Warm the sheets; fill 
some hot-water bottles.” 

In another minute Ed began to breathe a little, 
once in a while, without help. Whenever he’d stop, 
we would move his arms again and help him out. 
Then we rubbed his arms and legs toward his body, 
and his body toward the heart, to start the blood 
moving. When the doctor finally came, Ed was 
breathing without any help. 

We couldn’t understand at first how that old tub 
of a ferry-boat could have been wrecked, or how 
Ed could have been hurt. As soon as he was able 
to talk we found out about most of it and guessed 
the rest. 

The Polly Jane was a rough sort of a boat which 
made trips back and forth, across the narrowest part 
of the lake, between the hotel and the landing op¬ 
posite Lake View station, on the interurban railroad. 
It was only a platform, held up by empty barrels. 


First Aid to the Injured 301 

The ferryman pulled it across by means of a cable. 
Ed, the ferryman, was about twenty years old. We 
didn’t know his last name, but he lived somewhere 
around there and had a job working for the hotel 
during the summer. The boat was made to carry 
only twelve, and with twelve on you had to balance 
it just right and stand still. 

It seems that the “ S. S. Club ” of Valparaiso 
girls had come out to hold a picnic that afternoon. 
Nobody knew what “ S. S.” stood for; it was a se¬ 
cret. Someone told us that it meant Sweet Sixteen. 
Maybe it was Sunset Club. Anyhow, there were 
sixteen members and they stayed long after 
sunset, in order to try the new dance floor at the 
hotel. 

They stayed so long that there was not time for 
the ferry to make two trips across the lake before 
the last car would leave and so the whole sixteen, 
talking and laughing, piled on to the boat at once. 
Under their weight, the platform went down al¬ 
most even with the water. 

Ed didn’t want to take them at first. 

“ It isn’t safe,” said he. “ There are too many 


302 First Aid to the Injured 

of you and this old cable is pretty near played out. 
We are going to put on a new one to-morrow.” 

Just then they heard the car whistling for Wahob 
Lake. 

“ We’ve just got to go, Ed,” they told him. 
“ Please take us. We can’t stay here all night. 
We’ll stand still and do exactly what you tell us.” 

Ed fixed them where they would balance the 
boat, told them not to move, and started. He might 
have taken them across all right if two of the empty 
casks hadn’t begun to leak, but by the time the boat 
was halfway across the casks on one side had partly 
filled, letting that side of the platform down into 
the water. 

When the water washed over the feet of the girls, 
they screamed and crowded over to the other side, 
forcing that side under. Then, badly scared, they 
crowded back again. 

“ Stand still,” yelled the ferryman, as the water 
put out his lantern. 

He was too late. As he pulled on the cable with 
all his strength, trying to get across somehow, it 
broke. Ed went over backward, striking his head 


'A 


First Aid to the Injured 303 

against a timber, and lay there, half in the water, 
unconscious, until the tipping of the platform rolled 
him off into the lake. 

It was too dark for the passengers to see much 
of what was happening and they were too fright¬ 
ened to notice, if they could have seen. There was 
a panic for a few minutes. Those on the edges 
were crowded off into the water, where they 
splashed around, fighting in the dark for their lives 
and screaming for help in their fright. 

They all managed to catch hold of the wreck 
somewhere and hold on until their shrieks and calls 
for help had been heard by Raven Patrol, sound 
asleep in our tents, and it didn’t take us long to 
get there. 

“ Fellows,” said Mr. Norton, solemn-like, after 
we had gone back to camp and were getting ready 
for bed, “ you have saved a human life. I don’t 
count the girls, although that was fine work and 
most helpful. Someone else might have heard them 
and gone to the rescue if you hadn’t, but it seems 
probable that had it not been for my Scouts that 
young man would still be in Long Lake, and it seems 


304 First Aid to the Injured 

certain that but for your prompt work and your 
knowing how to resuscitate him he must have died. 
It pleases me to think of the joy unspeakable which 
fills the heart of that mother to-night, all because 
Raven Patrol made good.” 

“ Betcher life we did,” said Skinny, “ but we 
ought to have had a rope. Fellers, you never ought 
to go out without a rope.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


BACK TO BOB’S HILL 

T HAT was the real end of our great camping 
trip, for next day we were too busy packing 
up to have much fun. 

“ Anyhow,” laughed Mr. Norton, “ you are 
going out in a blaze of glory, and that is something. 
It isn’t everybody who can save sixteen beautiful 
young women, all in one evening.” 

“ Huh! ” said Skinny. “ That wasn’t anything. 
It was easy. We could have saved a lot more just 
as well as not. Couldn’t we, fellers? When it 
comes to rescuing folks, leave it to us.” 

We shipped all our things to Valparaiso on the 
six o’clock car and went along ourselves at the same 
time. Dick’s folks had asked us to take supper 
with them and spend the last night there. 

The Rattlesnakes went with us as far as Lake 
View station and gave us a rousing send-off. At 


305 


306 Back to Bob’s Hill 

Sheridan Beach we found Mrs. Laurence, Alice, and 
a bunch of Flint Lake girls, who waved their hand¬ 
kerchiefs and shouted good-by. 

“ Be sure to write to me,” Alice called, just as 
the car started, but we didn’t know which one she 
was saying it to. 

“ I’ll tell you what,” I said to the boys. 
“ I am secretary and it is up to me to do the 
writing.” 

The boys set up a groan at that, and Skinny 
wanted us to understand that he was leader of the 
patrol and captain of the Band. 

“ I saw her first, anyhow,” I told them. “ I saw 
her that summer at Starved Rock. She was looking 
through the bushes when the tramp was trying to 
rob Hank of his pearl. I discovered her; that’s 
what I did.” 

“ Discovered nothin’! ” put in Bill. “ Discover¬ 
ing doesn’t count with girls. You can discover the 
North Pole and things like that, but girls are dif¬ 
ferent.” 

“ Not always, I fear,” laughed Mr. Norton, who 
had been taking it all in. “ My own experience has 


Back to Bob’s Hill 307 

been that some girls are very similar to the North 
Pole.” 

“ Guess what,” said Benny. “ Let Pedro write 
to her, if he wants to. ’Cause why? There can’t 
anybody read his writin’.” 

“ Mr. Chairman,” shouted one of the boys, like 
we do when we hold meetings in our barn at home, 
or in the cave. 

“ The gentleman from Bob’s Hill,” said Skinny, 
swinging his hatchet, while all the passengers looked 
on in surprise, wondering what we were going 
to do. 

“ I move that we make the secretary do his writ¬ 
ing to her in invisible ink, the kind we make out 
of lemon juice.” 

There wasn’t any doubt about that vote. “ The 
ayes have it,” said Skinny, after the noise had 
stopped and he could make himself heard. 

I did it, too, only I told Alice how to make the 
writing come out plain by holding the letter up to 
a fire. But that part doesn’t belong in this history. 

At last we climbed on the train and started for 
Bob’s Hill, sorry to leave Dick behind but glad that 


308 Back to Bob’s Hill 

in another day we should see our folks, the cave, 
Peck’s Falls, and the rest. It seemed as if we had 
been gone a year and as if things ought to look dif¬ 
ferent. 

We changed cars at Pittsfield, Saturday fore¬ 
noon, and were less than twenty miles from home. 
The conductor came through the train with a tele¬ 
gram in his hand. 

“ Is there anybody in this bunch named Skinny 
Miller ? ” he asked. 

“ That’s me,” Skinny told him. 

“ Maybe somebody else wants to be rescued,” said 
Bill. 

Skinny didn’t answer, but tore the envelope open 
in a hurry. 

“ It’s from Jim,” he shouted, after he had looked 
at it. “ There is something going on. Read it out 
loud, Mr. Norton.” 

“ ‘ Skinny Miller, Patrol Leader, Raven Patrol,’ 
read Mr. Norton. ‘ Everybody get off at Maple 
Grove. 

“ ‘ Jim Donovan, Patrol Leader, 


“ ‘ Eagle Patrol.’ ” 


Maple Grove is the first station south of Bob’s 
Hill and only a mile away. We knew in a minute 
what the Eagles were up to. They were going to 
meet us there and march in. It made us all excited 
to think of it. 

“ I am wondering if you boys will care if I keep 
on the train until I get home,” said Mr. Norton, 
after thinking a minute. “ I don’t like to desert 
the colors, and if it makes any difference to you 
I’ll stick; but a very good friend of yours, Mrs. 
Norton by name, will be waiting for me at the sta¬ 
tion, and I do not like to disappoint her. 

“ We must have a meeting soon,” he went on, 
after we had agreed to let him off, “ and we must 
have your people there. They will want a report 
from me about how you fellows have behaved and 
I want to tell them how proud I am of these Boy 
Scouts of mine. I didn’t watch you every minute. 
I often had to leave you and place you upon honor. 
I sometimes was worried about you but I never 
was ashamed of you. You made good every time. 
You have been true Scouts and that means that you 
were young gentlemen, brave and trustworthy.” 


3 IQ 


Back to Bob’s Hill 


As soon as we had left Cheshire behind, we began 
to get our things together, ready to leave the train, 
and we were standing at the door, waiting, long 
before it was time. We couldn’t keep our eyes from 
the windows. Those mountains looked good to 
us. 

“ I could eat them,” exclaimed Skinny, “ I am 
that hungry.” 

“ Mt. Moriah is good, what little there is of it,” 
said Mr. Norton, “ but look there.” 

He pointed out of the window, as he spoke, to 
the hills and mountains that had closed in on both 
sides of the little, narrow Hoosac valley. In some 
places there was room only for the railroad, the 
river, and a wagon road; in others, the valley 
broadened out a little, but the mountains were close 
all the way. 

“ Maple Grove! ” called the brakeman. 

Mr. Norton went with us to the platform of the 
car, in order to wave to the Eagles, and we were off 
almost before the train had stopped. The minute 
we came in sight on the platform we heard a great 
cheering and drumming. And there stood Jim 


Back to Bob’s Hill 


3i i 

Donovan and the Gingham Ground Gang—I mean 
Eagle Patrol, in new Scout uniforms. They didn’t 
look any more like the Gang which we used to fight 
with than anything. 

There was great handshaking for a few minutes 
after the train moved away; then Jim formed us 
in line. In front he placed an Eagle Scout with a 
drum and Benny Wade, carrying the American flag. 
Then came Jim and Skinny, the two patrol leaders, 
looking proud and almost like generals; then Bill 
and the assistant patrol leader of the Eagles. After 
them the other Scouts, lined up in twos, an Eagle 
and a Raven side by side. 

“ Forward, march!” cried Jim. 

“ Rub-a-dub-dub! ” went the drum. 

Down the street we marched toward Bob’s Hill, 
keeping step to the drum, with our hearts smiling 
and our faces shining with happiness. And all the 
way along folks came out of their houses to see us 
go by. 

Believe me, there was some noise, after a few 
minutes, when old Greylock lifted his head above the 
hills and welcomed us. We turned up past the school, 


Back to Bob’s Hill 


3 12 

so that we could march through the business street; 
then down Commercial Street, where the clerks and 
customers in the stores ran out to the sidewalk and 
people that we knew waved and called to us as we 
passed. 

Just ahead was the bridge and the railroad cross¬ 
ing, with Park Street beyond. We could see Bob’s 
Hill looming up; down the street a little way was 
our house; across and below, was Benny’s. 

Then, just as I was thinking that in another 
minute I should walk into the house and see my 
folks, the procession turned south again, along the 
railroad, walking in the pathway by the side of the 
track. 

“ What is going on? ” I asked the Eagle who was 
marching with me. 

He grinned and shook his head, pretending that 
he didn’t know; but when we turned up a lane 
which I knew would take us into Plunkett’s woods, 
I began to understand. 

Soon we were in the midst of the woods and in 
a minute came out into an open space, with plenty 
of grass and shade and tables for picnickers. And 


Back to Bob’s Hill 313 

there were our folks, waiting to welcome us! And 
there were Mr. and Mrs. Norton and all kinds of 
things to eat! 

“ Break ranks! ” yelled Jim. 

But nobody heard him and nobody stopped to 
listen. We were too busy. 


THE END 


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